The origin of man is the origin of spirituality. Spirituality is as ancient a phenomenon as man himself. Since the beginning of his evolution, man has had spirituality. Actually, this is obvious, because spirituality is a distinctive characteristic of a person. There is spirituality - there is

Kyo, where did they come from? History knows how to keep its secrets. But the casket always opens easily. But the truth lies on the surface. But we dig deeper and find more and more mysteries.

We will begin our study of written cultures with the culture of the Sumerians - the first written civilization. Conventionally, the history of Sumerian civilization can be divided into 5 parts: The first era. About 6000-5500 years ago - the emergence of the Sumerian civilization in Mesopotamia. It is impossible to say exactly where these people came from. Perhaps a certain proto-people already lived in this territory, or maybe the Sumerians appeared with a complete store of knowledge. It is this time that is considered the date of the appearance of the Sumerian civilization on the pages of history. They are actively starting to build temples, ziggurats, and sanctuaries. Scientific achievements receive a powerful impetus that defies explanation. The Sumerians have no equal in the fields of mathematics, astronomy, chemistry, and medicine. Second era. 5500-5000 years ago. This period was marked by rapidly growing cities, a strengthening economy, and an increase in the holdings of the Sumerian civilization. They actively trade, writing and scribe schools appear. The Sumerian city-states, realizing that there is strength in unity, create a political union. Sumerian colonies appeared in Syria, Iran, and Egypt. The trade connections of the ancient Sumerian civilization are amazing. Without any navigational instruments, they reached the distant lands of Africa and Asia, where they established economic relations with local states. From there they, since it was always very difficult to obtain wood in Mesopotamia, delivered cedar. Third era. 5000-4300 years ago. The influence of the Sumerian civilization in the region is weakening, but the Sumerians themselves are becoming a more united people. The northern and southern parts of the country are becoming closely connected. Religious institutions emerge and gradually begin to gain influence and power. Divine commandments are recorded on clay tablets. Servants of cults are gaining increasing influence in the life of Sumerian civilization. This era is marked by the construction of the Tower of Babel, just at this time the Sumerians begin to forget about their language and become more and more assimilated with the Akkadians. Fourth era. 4300-4150 years ago. This period in the history of Sumerian civilization was marked by decline. The Sumerian people merge with the Akkadians, their language and customs are forgotten. The Akkadians become the new rulers and destroy Sumerian temples and foundations. Fifth era. 4150-4000 years ago. The final disappearance of the Sumerian civilization.

Now let's look at the Sumerian civilization in more detail. According to many researchers: M. Belitsky, Sumerians: a forgotten world. ; M., 2000. S. Kramer, History begins in Sumer. ; M., 1991. Sumerians: the first civilization on Earth. ; M., 2002. A. Chernyshov, Sumerians; M., 1993.etc.

The oldest civilization in Asia arose in the south of Mesopotamia (Interfluve), the territory of which is formed by two stormy, unruly rivers; Tigris and Euphrates. They originate in the Armenian Plateau (the territory of modern Turkey) and flow into the Persian Gulf. This region is usually called Western Asia, the Western East, and when it comes to modern events, the Middle East.

In ancient times, the south of Mesopotamia was a flat plain, along which sandstorms often swept, raising clouds of sand and dust. The earth there was cracking from the heat, the scanty vegetation was dying from lack of moisture. Even rivers brought innumerable troubles: their floods destroyed crops, destroyed homes and livestock. There was no sparkling marble, as in Greece, no pink granite, as in Egypt, there was not even simple building stone, no wood, no metals. The only wealth of the territory was clay and reeds. They were used by the people who lived on this land: they built houses from sun-dried clay bricks, made household utensils and tools from baked clay, and used clay as a material for writing.

These short, stocky, big-headed people (this is how they most often portrayed themselves) were surprisingly persistent and hardworking. The Sumerians knew how to drain swamps, build dams, and lay canals into arid lands. They transformed the barren valley: arable lands began to produce high yields, date groves, mimosa, willows and many other plants grew on the irrigated lands. In numerous cities, palaces and temples were built, decorated with colorful mosaics made of colored clay, and various crafts appeared. The Sumerians created a writing system called “cuneiform” because of its appearance.

In appearance, the Sumerians could be attributed more to the Caucasian peoples than to the Indo-European type. Although they bear little resemblance to modern Caucasians. They called themselves blackheads because of their blue-black hair. The Sumerians' figures were stocky, and their faces were more often round than any other shape. Another sign is large thoroughbred noses.

In the process of assimilation, creating marriages with other local peoples, the appearance of the Sumerians changed greatly. The Babylonians already had more elongated oval faces, and their figures became slimmer. Men's fashion for not having a mustache has also changed. If the Sumerians preferred a clean-shaven face, then their descendants became adherents of mustaches, sideburns and beards.

The Sumerians loved to dress beautifully, especially since the choice of outfits was very large due to the developed textile industry. By the way, subsequently the textile industry degraded, like other industries. But at the height of the Sumerian civilization fashion trends adhered to by both women and men. Sumerian women's attire consisted of either a smooth short-sleeved dress or a woven or woolen kaunakes skirt and jacket. The length of the skirt was just below the knee. IN cold weather representatives of ancient civilization wore a woolen cloak with a belt. The Sumerians, by the way, were the people who invented stockings. In addition to stockings, sandals or boots were worn on the feet. Representatives of some classes did not have shoes and walked barefoot. Everyone, without exception, did not wear shoes in their houses.
The Sumerians observed everything modern rules hygiene, used toiletries, and women took care of their nails, removed excess facial hair and constantly carried a manicure knife and tweezers hanging on a ring. Also, women already used perfumes and cosmetics at that time. They used blush, lined their eyes and eyebrows, and applied lipstick and eye shadow. Palms and feet were painted with henna, and tattoos were applied to the skin of the arms and body. Cosmetics were stored in special jars and sinks. When applying cosmetics, bronze mirrors on the handle were used, and hair was combed using a comb made of wood or ivory.

A bronze mirror, various jewelry, and tattoos on her body were found in the grave of Princess Ukok in Altai. The age of the burial is 2400 -2300 years. There is continuity between the Scythian (3000 - 2000 years ago) and Sumerian (6000 - 4000 years ago) cultures, despite the age difference of about 1000 years.

The question of the time of the appearance of the Sumerians in Mesopotamia and their ancestral homeland still remains unresolved. Scientists have put forward various hypotheses, and the latest research not only has not brought a final solution, but has made it even more difficult. And the Sumerian language also baffles researchers. Neither among the ancient nor among the modern languages ​​has it been possible to find one that had even a distant relationship with the language of the Sumerians. But thanks to written monuments; clay tablets; preserved in large numbers to our time, we know what the Sumerians looked like, how they ran their households, what gods they believed in, how they raised children, and much more.

Samuel Kramer, who is the largest expert on Sumer in the book “History Begins in Sumer,” described in detail the life and way of life of this ancient people: “The cities built by the Sumerians became centers of progress. Life was in full swing in the labyrinth of cramped streets. Carts rumbled along the pavements, the hammers of carpenters making tables and chairs clattered, the furnaces of glassblowers and bronze foundries smoked with heat. Local weavers made fine fabrics from flax.”

In Sumer, barter trade flourished using the so-called “payment stones”; a prototype of future money.

Typically, a third of urban areas were allocated to gardens and vegetable gardens. The grown grains were used as food; the Sumerians used them to cook porridge, flavoring it with honey and dates. They baked bread and roasted locusts in spherical ovens.

Ladies of that distant era wore wigs, loved precious jewelry, and among the accessories of the ladies' toilet there were even tiny spoons to clean ear wax. For men, the upper body was often simply naked, and a woolen skirt replaced pants. The man's head was shaved and his beard was cut in the shape of a rectangular board; they did not recognize mustaches,

The Sumerians organized carnivals: once a year, at a festival, men dressed in women's clothing, and women; in a soldier's uniform.

In the city one could meet a whole army of scribes who, with sharp thin sticks, wrote onto clay everything that seemed important: legislative acts and sacred texts, tax payments, business letters, notes from lovers, mathematical exercises. During excavations in the archives of Sumerian cities, tens of thousands of tablets were found, from which it is clear what great importance the Sumerians attached to reporting and drawing up business documents. Everything was recorded, accounted for and written down on a tablet.

The Sumerians showed an amazing passion for scientific knowledge, becoming the first mathematicians and astronomers of antiquity, and their achievements in geography, physics, chemistry, medicine, history, philology, military affairs and agriculture amaze modern scientists.

Residents of this state conducted observations of the stars and planets. Thousands of clay tablets have been found containing hundreds of astronomical terms. Some of these tablets contained mathematical formulas and astronomical tables with which the Sumerians could predict solar eclipses, various phases of the moon, and the trajectories of the planets. The Sumerians measured the rising and setting of visible planets and stars relative to the earth's horizon, using the same system that is used today. We also adopted from them the division of the celestial sphere into three segments - northern, central and southern (among the Sumerians, these are the “path of Enlil”, “path of Anu” and “path of Ea”). In fact, all modern concepts of spherical astronomy, including the complete spherical circle of 360 degrees, the zenith, the horizon, the axes of the celestial sphere, the poles, the ecliptic, the equinox, all originated in Sumer.

All the knowledge of the Sumerians regarding the movement of the Sun and the Earth was combined in the world's first solar-lunar calendar, which they created, which began in 3760 BC. This calendar consisted of 12 lunar months of approximately 354 days, and then added 11 additional days to create a complete solar year.
Long before Pythagoras, the Sumerians were able to calculate the right triangle. They were able to quadratic equations With many unknowns, the number “pi” was also familiar.

The Sumerians used a sexagesimal number system. Although cumbersome, it allowed them to calculate fractions and multiply numbers up to millions, take roots and raise to powers. In some respects this system was even superior to the decimal system we currently use. Firstly, the number 60 has ten prime factors, while the number 100 has only 7. Secondly, it is the only system ideally suited for geometric calculations, which is why it continues to be used today. for example, dividing a circle into 360 degrees.
We rarely realize that we owe not only our geometry, but also our modern way of calculating time, to the Sumerian sexagesimal number system. It is based on the division of an hour into 60 minutes, and minutes into 60 seconds. Echoes of the Sumerian number system were preserved in the division of the day into 24 hours, and the year into 12 months.

Sumerian doctors could heal fractures, amputate diseased organs, remove eyesores, and systematize diseases. The famous library of Ashurbanipal had a large medical department. Medical procedures were described in special reference books, which contained descriptions of diseases, information about hygiene rules, and the use of alcohol for disinfection during surgical operations.

It seems incredible, but the Sumerians knew how to make alloys - a process by which different metals are chemically combined when heated in a furnace. The Sumerians learned to produce bronze, a hard but easily workable metal, and knew how to alloy copper with tin. Their language had about thirty words to mean various types copper of different qualities, and they always called tin with only one word “AMMA”, which literally means “Heavenly Stone

The Sumerians were excellent travelers and explorers - they are also credited with inventing the world's first sea and river vessels. The Sumerian language contains at least 100 words denoting different types of ships, classifying them by size, purpose and type of cargo transported. Various texts talk about the repair of ships, and about building materials and all kinds of goods transported on ships, ranging from gold, silver, copper, to diorite, carnelian and cedar. In some cases, these materials were transported over thousands of kilometers.

Professor Kramer names 39 objects that were discovered by the Sumerians. In addition to the first writing system, he included in this list the wheel, the first schools, the first bicameral parliament, and the first “farmer's almanac.” The first collection of proverbs and aphorisms appeared in Sumer, and literary debates took place for the first time. Here the first book catalog appeared, the first money was circulated, taxes began to be introduced for the first time, the first laws were adopted and social reforms were carried out, and attempts were made for the first time to achieve peace and harmony in society. The Sumerians invented the diamond drill, the water-lifting wheel, and built the world's first aqueduct.

The Sumerians highly valued wisdom, which they believed was concentrated in the ears of man; therefore, many images of people were distinguished by their large protruding ears. Sumerian rulers often ordered to capture themselves in a special “builder’s pose” - with a drawing of a building spread out on their knees, with a small bucket of raw clay placed at their feet. These people loved to build more than to fight, and the image of a creator, according to the Sumerians, was more suitable for a ruler than the image of a warrior. Despite this, they had powerful military equipment for those times: mounted troops, ramming guns, and even floating bridges made of wineskins. The Sumerians built fortresses. For example, the city of Uruk, where more than one hundred thousand inhabitants lived, was surrounded by a ten-kilometer wall on which 800 defensive towers rose.

The Sumerians created a rich and complex culture that became a role model throughout Mesopotamia (Interfluve). Sumerian cuneiform was subsequently used by many peoples who adapted it to their languages.

According to Yuri Lednev, “Secrets of the first civilizations of Sumer. Vimana" M., 2012, "Even from the school course on ancient history, we remember that the very first highly developed civilization was ancient Egypt, a state that, according to academic science, appeared 3500–4000 BC. Later, this baton was taken over by another hypothesis, as soon as in the region of Mesopotamia (in the southeast of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers) archaeologists discovered traces of the more ancient civilization of the Sumerians, the emergence of which dates back to 4 thousand years BC. According to the artifacts found, the city of Sumer had all the signs of a highly developed civilization. For example, in their mathematical calculations, the Sumerians used the ternary number system. They were familiar with the numbers “Pi” and “Phi” (also called the Fibonacci number). In Sumerian legends one can find a description of the structure and development of the solar system. In those distant times, many peoples were attracted to the fertile oases of Mesopotamia, including the Sumerians. There is no reliable data on the nature of the Sumerians in science yet, and it is also unknown where they disappeared. The Sumerians were good farmers, using a special system of water canals to irrigate their lands. The Sumerians had their own cuneiform script, it is also believed that they invented the wheel and had a broad understanding of astronomy and mathematics. The Sumerians built amazing cities. The most important Sumerian city of that time was Uruk. Approximately 3 thousand years BC it was one of the largest cities in the world, with a population of about 100 thousand people, and also a center of worship of the god Unu and the goddess Inanna. The Sumerian state was formed as a result of the merger of several settlements, under the names of Kulaba, Eana and Uruk, and occupied an area of ​​​​about 125 hectares, where it was the center of Mesopotamia. The entire territory of Uruk was surrounded by a nine-kilometer brick wall, erected during the reign of King Gilgamesh. The epic of King Gilgamesh is considered to be the first in history literary work. The wall was erected as a defensive fortification as a result of numerous wars with other states that took place over a long period of time. The legend “Gilgamesh and Aga” tells us about this, which tells about the wars of the city of Uruk with the city of Kish. The victory of King Gilgamesh brought the city of Uruk dominance over the entire Southern Mesopotamia and remained throughout the reign of the first dynasty. In the middle of the third millennium it was replaced by the Ur dynasty. Then Uruk is conquered by Sargon the Ancient, destroying almost all the walls of the huge city and incorporating it into the newly formed state of Akkad. Uruk retained its importance as a major trade and craft center throughout subsequent times. Numerous ruins of the Ziggurat, the “palace of the Parthian kings” (built by King Karaindash), as well as an ancient temple have survived to this day. For a long time, Uruk remained the center of all epic traditions telling of the Sumerian gods and the stories of King Gilgamesh. Only the smallest part of the ruins of that former state has been explored today. Nowadays Mesopotamia is considered the “cradle” of all civilizations. The Sumerians were a very mysterious people, leaving behind many secrets and food for thought for scientists and researchers.

For example, one of the mysteries is that the Sumerians divided the entire human history into two main stages: before the flood and after the flood. Before the flood, ten kings ruled the Sumerian lands. The Babylonian priest Berossus, who lived in the third century BC and systematized all Sumerian mythology, tells us about this. The second riddle is kept in the Berlin State Museum, where one of the Akkadian cylinder seals depicts a large circle with six rays, and around it there are eleven more circles. Obviously, this is the structure of the solar system and this is 3 thousand years ago! But the mystery here is not this, but the fact that Pluto is depicted here not as a planet, but as a satellite of Saturn, and between Jupiter and Mars a small circle is shown, approximately four times larger in size than the Earth. The Sumerians identified this circle as the twelfth planet of the solar system and called it Nibiru, and in the mythology of ancient Babylon this planet was also called Marduk, which means “Taurus”. The orbit of the planet Nibiru is very elongated, but every 3600 years Nibiru crosses the Solar System, and the name “Nibiru” is translated as “crossing.” The Sumerians have a lot associated with this planet, from legends describing the origins of life on earth to subsequent global cataclysms. Scientists themselves have long admired such deep and accurate knowledge of the ancient Sumerians about the structure of our solar system, making only one small amendment to the fact that the Sumerians, after all, made two small mistakes: they called Pluto a satellite and claimed that it rotates between Jupiter and Mars some kind of planet unknown to science. And such an “oversight” was considered such only until recently, until, relatively recently, astronomers recognized that Pluto is not a planet, and that between Jupiter and Mars, in fact, the orbit of a large planet once passed, next to which there were many unknown asteroids origin.

The essence of the question here is that the Sumerians were the bearers of ancient secret knowledge about the past of our planet, which we have already seen more than once, let us recall at least the Sumerians’ knowledge about the structure of the solar system. In this entire mythological story that the Sumerians told us, in addition to the structure of the solar system, much is now recognized by scientists, except, of course, the version about the “alien” origin of humanity. It is believed that most of the Biblical Old Testament was taken precisely from Sumerian legends.

Obviously, this was one of the most ancient human civilizations bestowed by the Gods. A civilization that, for unknown reasons, disappeared from the face of the earth, leaving behind many secrets and mysteries. So why and where did this civilization disappear? Zecharia Sitchin connects the disappearance of the Sumerians with the war between the Gods beyond the Cosmodrome on the Sinai Peninsula. Indeed, in the Sinai Peninsula there are huge areas of melting rocks, which is a consequence of the release of high-temperature gases, such as from modern rockets. Official science has to doubt the reliability of these judgments. It is difficult to argue about what was not reflected in ancient textbooks and books, or in the memory of any people. Could ancient people really fly in spaceships and wage wars like in science fiction films? “Nonsense,” the skeptics will say. “Yes, that’s exactly how it happened!” - supporters of the theory of paleocontact, or simply people with a rich imagination, will say. Here we can agree that at school we were not taught that our ancestors traveled on aircraft. We do not study in aviation schools and universities the methods of construction and designs of ancient “airplanes”. And science, as we know, in its judgments relies exclusively on any sources, primarily written ones. But where can you get books that are several thousand years old? It turns out that such books exist. Many people began to turn to ancient sources, images, artifacts of various peoples of the world, which directly indicate, not even indirectly, that such aircraft actually existed. One of such descriptions is considered to be the manuscript “Vimanika Shastra”, found in one of the temples of India in 1875. It is believed that this manuscript was written by Bharadwaja the Wise in the 4th century BC, who took even more ancient texts as a basis. That's when the scientists started getting headaches. They are used to the fact that the airplane was invented only in the middle of the 19th century, but here they have this.”

According to Wikipedia, the Sumerians are a people who in later written documents call themselves “black-headed” (Sumerian “sang-ngiga”, Akkadian “tsalmat-kakkadi”).

They were a people ethnically, linguistically and culturally alien to the Semitic tribes who settled Northern Mesopotamia at approximately the same time or somewhat later. The Sumerian language, with its bizarre grammar, is not related to any of the surviving languages. Attempts to find their original homeland have so far ended in failure.

Apparently, the country from which the Sumerians came was located somewhere in Asia, rather in a mountainous area, but located in such a way that its inhabitants were able to master the art of navigation. Evidence that the Sumerians came from the mountains is their way of building temples, which were erected on artificial embankments or on terraced hills made of brick or clay blocks. It is unlikely that such a custom could have arisen among the inhabitants of the plains. It, along with their beliefs, had to be brought from their ancestral homeland by the inhabitants of the mountains, who paid honor to the gods on the mountain peaks. And another piece of evidence is that in the Sumerian language the words “country” and “mountain” are written the same way.

There is also a lot to suggest that the Sumerians came to Mesopotamia by sea. Firstly, they primarily appeared in river mouths. Secondly, in their ancient beliefs the main role was played by the gods Anu, Enlil and Enki.

The gods were depicted with wings and a halo above their heads, the Goddess Enlil for some reason is depicted with flippers, the gods were depicted with hooves and a tail, this is how devils are drawn now,

And finally, as soon as they settled in Mesopotamia, the Sumerians immediately began organizing irrigation, navigation and navigation along rivers and canals. The first Sumerians to appear in Mesopotamia were a small group of people. There was no need to think about the possibility of mass migration by sea at that time. The Sumerian epic mentions their homeland, which they considered the ancestral home of all humanity - the island of Dilmun, but there are no mountains on this island. Dilmu;n (possibly the modern island of Bahrain) is an island in the Persian Gulf known to the ancient Sumerians. In the ideas of the Sumerians, Dilmun was represented as the birthplace of humanity and the cradle of civilization in general and the Sumerian people in particular. Through Dilmun, copper, precious stones, pearls and certain vegetables were exported to Sumer; in return, a variety of products were exported from Mesopotamia through the island,

Having settled at the mouths of the rivers, the Sumerians captured the city of Eredu. This was their first city. Later they began to consider it the cradle of their statehood. Over the years, the Sumerians moved deeper into the Mesopotamian plain, building or conquering new cities. For the most distant times, the Sumerian tradition is so legendary that it has almost no historical significance. It was already known from Berossus’ data that the Babylonian priests divided the history of their country into two periods: “before the flood” and “after the flood.” Berossus, in his historical work, notes 10 kings who ruled “before the flood” and gives fantastic figures for their reign. The same data is given by the Sumerian text of the 21st century BC. e., the so-called “Royal List”. In addition to Eredu, the “Royal List” names Bad Tibiru, Larak (later unimportant settlements), as well as Sippar in the north and Shuruppak in the center as “antediluvian” centers of the Sumerians. This newcomer people subjugated the country without displacing - the Sumerians simply could not - the local population, but on the contrary, they adopted many of the achievements of the local culture.

The identity of material culture, religious beliefs, and socio-political organization of various Sumerian city-states does not at all prove their political community. On the contrary, it is more likely to assume that from the very beginning of the Sumerian expansion into Mesopotamia, rivalry arose between individual cities, both newly founded and conquered.
The origins of this population group and the ancestry of the Sumerian language are part of a larger historical problem known in scientific literature as the "Sumerian problem".

The ethnonym "Sumerians" is a scientific abstraction used to designate the ancient non-Semitic population of Mesopotamia who spoke a known language. The “Sumerians” themselves did not clearly separate themselves from their neighbors, the Semites-Akkadians: both had the same self-name - “black-headed” (Sum. sag-gig-ga, Akkadian; almat qaqqadim). The name is taken from the name of the country from the title of the ancient Assyrian kings "king of Sumer and Akkad". Since the Semitic-speaking population of Mesopotamia - Akkadians, Babylonians and ancient Assyrians called their language “Akkadian”, early researchers designated another, difficult to decipher language as “Sumerian”, and its speakers as “Sumerians”

The origin of the Sumerians is one of the most difficult scientific problems. Basically, the “Sumerian question” was formulated at the end of the 19th century. F. Weisbach. Initially, many studies were related to the search for the “Sumerian ancestral home.” This was due to the acceptance in the scientific community of the concept of the initial flooding of Southern Mesopotamia by the waters of the Persian Gulf and the gradual retreat of the sea due to the progradation of the Tigro-Euphrates delta. Since such a model rejected the existence of any aboriginal population in Sumer before a certain time, the question arose about the origins of the Sumerian civilization. Various researchers placed the “Sumerian ancestral home” in Arabia (W. K. Loftus), Elam (G. Frankfort, E. Perkins), and connected it with the Harappan civilization. After the publication in 1952 of an article by geologists J. M. Lees and N. L. Folken, proving the insignificant effect of progradation, a separate branch of discussion and research appeared, primarily of a geological orientation. In the course of these studies, it was established that the Persian Gulf was formed relatively recently (approximately from the 8th millennium BC), that its coastline constantly fluctuated, but in general, never flooded the entire south of Mesopotamia, and that in Ubaid times, which date the earliest finds in Sumer, the water level was approximately equal to the modern one. Indications that, due to severe climatic conditions, the existence of a permanent population in Lower Mesopotamia is impossible without irrigation skills (and such skills could only arise in sufficiently developed societies) are refuted by ethnographic information and data on the productivity of the resources of swamps and reed beds of the lower reaches of the Tigris and Euphrates. However, the low slope of the valley of the great rivers, which led to frequent flooding, and the high level of groundwater have not yet allowed archaeologists to discover layers in Lower Mesopotamia that predate the Ubaid time; a possible exception, Tell el-Wayli, was located on a hill and is by far the earliest site in Sumer. Finds from Tell el-Wayli indicate the connection of the inhabitants of this monument with the Samarra culture and the traditions of the Pre-Pottery Neolithic of Syria.

From the middle of the 20th century. Research on the Sumerian problem finally moved into the field of linguistics. Basically, these works were looking for genetic connections to the Sumerian language, which today is considered isolated. These searches are complicated by a double distortion of the language: the Sumerian cuneiform was deciphered through the completely alien Akkadian language, and that, in turn, through other unrelated languages, including ancient Greek. As a result, many hypotheses have been put forward linking Sumerian with many languages ​​of Eurasia, but to date, none of these hypotheses is generally accepted.
The Sumerians themselves in their myths call the island of Dilmun the ancestral home of humanity, the description of which contains archetypal features of the golden age and the lost paradise. The toponym “Dilmun” is also found in historical texts and is identified with modern Bahrain, but the Mesopotamian finds in Bahrain are younger than the Sumerian ones. On the other hand, recent geological and archaeological studies indicate the likelihood of the existence in the Pleistocene era of a huge oasis located on the site of the Persian Gulf before the latter was flooded with waters Indian Ocean(the so-called Gulf Oasis), however, due to a lack of material, it is not yet possible to draw any reliable parallels.

Anthropological features of the Sumerians are a subject of debate; this situation is due to two factors: 1) the small number and poor preservation of anthropological material, 2) the long coexistence of the Sumerians with representatives of other population groups, the “ethnic” mixture of burials, the difficulty of establishing the “ethnic” affiliation of the skeletons. In general, researchers attribute the ancient population of Southern Mesopotamia to the Mediterranean type of the Caucasian race. These are people with dark skin, dark eyes, straight nose, dark straight or curly hair; The population of modern Southern Iraq also has this appearance. At the same time, researchers made an attempt to identify the actual “Sumerian” features. In particular, A. Mortgat suggested differences in the cranial index between the Sumerians and the Semites/Akkadians; He considered dolichocephaly to be a characteristic feature of the former, and brachycephaly of the latter. G. Frankfort made an attempt to establish the anthropological type of the Sumerians from ancient images; According to his research, the Sumerians, on the contrary, were short-headed. Subsequent researchers were skeptical about G. Frenkfort's thesis, pointing out the distortion and unrepresentativeness of these images for anthropological research.

Sumerian is an agglutinative language; forms and derivatives are formed by adding unambiguous affixes (unlike inflected languages ​​such as Russian, where affixes are usually ambiguous). Agglutination is characteristic of the Uralic, Altai, Philippine, Dravidian languages, Basque languages, some Indian peoples, etc. From the point of view of the strategy for encoding verbal actants, Sumerian is an ergative language, that is, its grammar is not dominated by the opposition of subject and object, carried out in languages ​​of the nominative structure , but a contrast between the agent (the producer of the action) and the patient (the bearer of the action). This feature is characteristic of the languages ​​of the Caucasian peoples, Burushaski, Basque, Papuan, Australian, Chukchi-Kamchatka, Eskimo-Aleut, and Indian languages. Phonology is reconstructed in the most general terms. The name was divided into classes, had categories of number (1 singular and 6 plural), case (9 in total) and possessiveness. The verb had the categories of person, number, class, aspect, mood and orientation. There were 12 inclinations. The usual word order in Sumerian is SOV (subject - object - predicate). It is known that there are two dialects: Eme-Gir and Eme-Sal

Sumerian writing underwent an evolution from semi-pictographic writing, which, according to D. Schmandt-Besser, dates back to registration marks (known in the Middle East since the 9th millennium BC) to a relatively ordered cuneiform script. After the disappearance of Sumerian from everyday communication, it was used for a long time as the language of worship and science.
Modern researchers see no obstacles to the existence of the population in Lower Mesopotamia in the pre-Ubaid era (that is, before the 6th-5th millennium BC); however, it is not yet possible to determine whether the ancestors of the Sumerians were among this population. Around the 6th millennium, traces of colonization of the region by newcomers from Central and Upper Mesopotamia, possibly Elam and the Eastern Mediterranean, have been recorded. Connections with a particular region are evidenced by architectural features, the nature of ceramics and some other features. Apparently, the main role was played by people from the north (representatives of the Samarran and Halaf cultures), who had skills in irrigation, monumental construction, specialization of crafts, economic accounting, etc. In Lower Mesopotamia they founded autonomous colonies (like Tell el-Wayli), living off irrigation and the resources of the surrounding rivers and swamps. Over time, some colonies turned into large centers, proto-cities (the most striking example is Eredu, inhabited continuously from the Ubaid 1 phase until historical time). It is possible that early contacts with northern colonists led to the Sumerians borrowing a number of “cultural terms” (the so-called “proto-Euphrates substrate”); The names of some famous cities of Lower Mesopotamia - Larsa, Babylon, etc. - also have a non-Sumerian etymology.

In the Ubaid time (approximately V - early IV millennium BC), the economic rise of Lower Mesopotamia was recorded. When irrigation is used, the local alluvium is particularly fertile; The abundance of agricultural products leads to rapid population growth, accumulation of surpluses, and deepening social differentiation. The skills of the early farmers of Northern Mesopotamia - monumental construction, interregional exchange, economic accounting, division of labor, metal processing, etc. are rapidly developing in the south. As a result, by the end of the Ubaid time, the first temples appeared in Lower Mesopotamia (in Eredu, Uruk), proto-cities, the first irrigation networks, the first nomes, etc. were formed. The ethnic composition of Lower Mesopotamia of the Ubaid time is unclear, but the ancestors of the Sumerians could have been among the local population. One way or another, the obvious continuity of the material culture of this time with the subsequent “Sumerian” eras allows some researchers to call the culture of Ubaid Southern Mesopotamia “proto-Sumerian”.

Further progress is observed in the Uruk era (second half of the 4th millennium BC). The vast majority of researchers accept the thesis about the presence or predominance of the Sumerian population in Lower Mesopotamia at this time. Uruk is a Bronze Age culture that replaced the Chalcolithic Ubaid. The expansion of irrigation networks, the development of specialization of production, the rapid growth of proto-cities against the background of deepening social differentiation could be the reasons for such a phenomenon as Sumerian colonization. The Sumerian colonies were well-fortified fortresses with a well-thought-out layout (examples are the monuments of Habub Kabir, Jebel Aruda, etc.), created in strategically important places (near crossings, on trade routes, etc.). The main object of colonization was Northern Mesopotamia, where southern influence became strong during Ubaid times (the so-called “northern Ubaid”). In the indigenous zone of the Sumerian civilization, the foundations of statehood were laid. At the end of Uruk time, during the period of Jemdet Nasr (late 4th - early 3rd millennium BC; often distinguished as a separate period), images of rulers and priest-kings appeared, semi-pictographic writing already existed, city-states were formed, complex temple administration, monumental construction is underway, predatory campaigns are carried out in neighboring countries. Thus, by the beginning of the 3rd millennium BC. e. The foundations of the Sumerian civilization were formed.

The subsequent period of the Early Dynasties (approximately XXVIII - XXIV centuries BC) is the heyday of the Sumerian civilization. At that time, the latter covered the territories of Lower Mesopotamia - the regions of Ki-Engi (Sumer proper) and Ki-Uri (later Akkad). For unknown reasons, Uruk colonization had ceased by the time of the RD, and the presence of the Sumerian population in the centers north of Ki-Uri is a subject of debate. In the Early Dynastic era, Lower Mesopotamia was a conglomerate of city-states or nomes constantly warring among themselves. The most important centers of Sumer (Ki-Engi) were Ur and Uruk, in Ki-Uri - Kish. A special place was occupied by the vast nome of Lagash, which initially apparently was under the hegemony of Kish. At the end of the Early Dynastic period, the vast majority of the nomes of Sumer and Ki-Uri found themselves united under the rule of Lugalzagesi. However, the Akkadian revolt put an end to this confederation.

Since ancient times, Eastern Semites lived in the neighborhood of the Sumerians. The circumstances and time of their appearance in Lower Mesopotamia remain the subject of debate and are not known for certain. The Eastern Semites were a minority in Sumer (Ki-Engi), but in the region of Ki-Uri their proportion was significant. In the XXIV century. BC e. The Akkadian kingdom arose in Ki-Uri, whose rulers and language were Semitic. The Akkadians (as the Eastern Semites have since been called) were able to establish control over the city-states of Sumer. The suppression of uprisings and terror of the Akkadian kings leads to a decline in culture in Sumer. In the XXII century. BC e. The lands of Sumer and Akkad were united under the rule of the Third Dynasty of Ur, whose kings patronized Sumerian culture in every possible way. Despite the visible “Sumerian revival”, at this time the peak of Semitization of the population of Ki-Enga was observed: Akkadian was rapidly displacing Sumerian from spoken language.
After the collapse of the powers of the III dynasty of Ur, the lands of Sumer and Akkad fell under the rule of the Amorites. Subsequently, this territory was subjugated by the Babylonian kings. In the 2nd millennium BC. e. As a result of the mixing of the Sumerians with the Akkadians and some other ethnic groups, the Babylonians were formed.

Now there is not much fiction. According to Aktore Bazarov, “perhaps the Sumerian civilization is the most ancient on Earth. Their first civilization arose in a mind-boggling time: no less than 445 thousand years ago. Many scientists have struggled and are struggling to solve the mystery of the most ancient people on the planet, but mysteries still remain.

Niberu's next passage through the solar system is expected between 2100 and 2158. According to the Sumerians, the planet Niberu was inhabited by conscious beings - the Anunaki. Their lifespan was 360,000 Earth years. They were real giants: women were from 3 to 3.7 meters tall, and men from 4 to 5 meters.

It is worth noting here that, for example, the ancient ruler of Egypt Akhenaten was 4.5 meters tall, and the legendary beauty Nefertiti was about 3.5 meters tall. Already in our time, two unusual coffins were discovered in Akhenaten’s city of Tel el-Amarna. In one of them, directly above the head of the mummy, an image of the Flower of Life was engraved. And in the second coffin, the bones of a seven-year-old boy, whose height was about 2.5 meters, were found. Now this coffin with the remains is on display in the Cairo Museum.

In Sumerian cosmogony, the main event is called the “celestial battle,” a catastrophe that occurred 4 billion years ago and changed the appearance of the solar system.

A sensational discovery by astronomers in recent years has been the discovery of a set of fragments of some celestial body that have a common orbit corresponding to the orbit of the unknown planet Nibiru.

The Sumerian manuscripts contain information that can be interpreted as information about the origin of intelligent life on Earth. According to these data, the genus Homo sapiens was created artificially as a result of genetic engineering about 300 thousand years ago. Thus, perhaps humanity is a civilization of biorobots.

Six thousand years ago... Civilizations ahead of their time, or the mystery of the climate optimum.

The deciphering of Sumerian manuscripts shocked researchers. Let us give a short and incomplete list of the achievements of this unique civilization, which existed at the dawn of the development of Egyptian civilization, long before the Roman Empire, and even more so Ancient Greece. We are talking about a time about 6 thousand years ago.

After deciphering the Sumerian tables, it became clear that the Sumerian civilization had a number of modern knowledge from the field of chemistry, herbal medicine, cosmogony, astronomy, modern mathematics (for example, it used the golden ratio, the ternary number system, used after the Sumerians only when creating modern computers, used Fibonacci numbers! ), had knowledge of genetic engineering (this interpretation of the texts was given by a number of scientists in the order of the version of the deciphering of the manuscripts), had a modern government system - a jury trial and elected bodies of people's (in modern terminology) deputies, and so on...
Where could such knowledge come from at that time? Let's try to figure it out, but let's look at some facts about that era - 6 thousand years ago. This time is significant because the average temperature on the planet was then several degrees higher than it is now. The effect is called the temperature optimum.

The approach of the double system of Sirius (Sirius-A and Sirius-B) to the Solar system dates back to the same period. At the same time, for several centuries of the 4th millennium BC, instead of one Moon, two were visible in the sky - the second celestial body, comparable in size to the Moon at that time, was the approaching Sirius, an explosion in the system of which occurred again in the same period - 6 thousand years ago!

At the same time, absolutely independent of the development of the Sumerian civilization in central Africa, there was a Dogon tribe, leading a rather isolated way of life from other tribes and nationalities, however, as it became known in our time, the Dogon knew the details of not only the structure of the Sirius star system, but also owned other information from the field of cosmogony.

These are the parallels. But if the Dogon legends contain people from Sirius, whom this African tribe perceived as gods who descended from the sky and flew to Earth due to a catastrophe on one of the inhabited planets of the Sirius system associated with an explosion on the star Sirius, then if you believe the Sumerian According to texts, the Sumerian civilization was associated with settlers from the lost 12th planet of the solar system, the planet Nibiru.

The planet Nibiru plays a special role in the formation of the mysterious Sumerian civilization. So, the Sumerians claim that they had contact with the inhabitants of the planet Nibiru! It was from this planet, according to Sumerian texts, that the Anunaki came to Earth, “descending from heaven to Earth.”

The Bible also testifies in favor of this statement. In the sixth chapter of Genesis there is a mention of them, where they are called nifilim, “descended from heaven.” The Anunaki, according to Sumerian and other sources (where they were called "nifilim"), often mistaken for "gods", "took earthly women as wives."

Here we are dealing with evidence of the possible assimilation of settlers from Nibiru. By the way, if you believe these legends, of which there are many in various cultures, then humanoids not only belonged to the protein form of life, but were also so compatible with earthlings that they were able to have common offspring. Biblical sources also testify to such assimilation. Let us add that in most religions, the gods met with earthly women. Doesn't what has been said indicate the reality of paleocontacts, that is, contacts with representatives of other inhabited celestial bodies that occurred from tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of years ago?

How incredible is it that creatures close to human nature exist outside of Earth? Among the supporters of the plurality of intelligent life in the Universe there were many great scientists, among whom it is enough to mention Tsiolkovsky, Vernadsky and Chizhevsky.

However, the Sumerians report much more than the biblical books. According to Sumerian manuscripts, the Anunaki first arrived on Earth approximately 445 thousand years ago, that is, long before the emergence of the Sumerian civilization.

Let's try to find an answer in the Sumerian manuscripts to the question: why did the inhabitants of the planet Nibiru fly to Earth 445 thousand years ago? It turns out that they were interested in minerals, primarily gold. Why?

If we take as a basis the version about environmental disaster on the 12th planet of the solar system, then we could talk about creating a protective gold-containing screen for the planet. Note that technology similar to the proposed one is now used in space projects.

At first, the Anunaki unsuccessfully tried to extract gold from the waters of the Persian Gulf, and then took up mining in Southeast Africa. Every 3600 years, when the planet Niberu appeared near the earth, gold reserves were sent to it.

According to the chronicles, the Anunaki were mining gold for quite a long time: from 100 to 150 thousand years. And then, as expected, an uprising broke out. The long-lived Anunnaki were tired of working in the mines for hundreds of thousands of years. And then the leaders made a unique decision: to create “primitive workers” to work in the mines.

And the entire process of the creation of man or the process of mixing divine and earthly components - the process of in vitro fertilization - is painted in detail on clay tablets and depicted on the cylinder seals of the Sumerian chronicles. This information literally shocked modern geneticists.

The ancient Hebrew Bible, the Torah, which was born in the ruins of Sumer, attributed the act of creating man to Elohim. This word is given in the plural and should be translated as gods. Well, the purpose of the creation of man is defined very precisely: “... and there was no man to cultivate the land.” The ruler of Niberu Anu and the chief scientist of the Anunaki Enki decided to create “Adamu”. This word comes from "Adamah" (earth) and means "Earthling".

Enki decided to use straight walking anthropomorphic creatures that already lived on earth, and improve them so much that they understood orders and could use tools. They understood that earthly hominids had not yet undergone evolution and decided to speed up this process.

Viewing the universe as a single living and intelligent being, self-organizing on an infinite number of levels, whereby mind and intelligence are permanent cosmic factors, he believed that life on earth originated from the same cosmic seed of life as on his home planet.

In the Torah, Enki is called Nahash, which translated means “snake, serpent” or “one who knows secrets, secrets.” And the emblem of the cult center of Enki were two intertwined snakes. In this symbol you can see a model of the structure of DNA, which Enki was able to unravel as a result of genetic research.

Enki's plans included using primate DNA and Anunaki DNA to create a new race. Enki attracted a young beautiful girl, whose name was Ninti - “the lady who gives life,” as an assistant. Subsequently, this name was replaced by the pseudonym Mami, a prototype of the universal word mom.

The chronicles record the instructions that Enki gave to Ninti. First of all, all procedures must be performed under completely sterile conditions. Sumerian texts repeatedly mention that before working with “clay,” Ninti first washed her hands. As is clear from the text, Enki used in his work the egg of an African female monkey that lived north of Zimbabwe.

The instructions read: “Mix clay (egg) from the base of the earth, which is slightly up (to the north) from Abzu, to the “essence”, and fit it into a mold with the “essence.” I imagine a good, knowledgeable, young Anunaki who will bring the clay (egg) to the desired state... you will pronounce the fate of the newborn... Ninti will embody in him the image of the gods, and what it will become will be Man.”

The divine element, which in the Sumerian chronicles is called “TE-E-MA” and is translated as “essence” or “that which binds memory”, and in our understanding it is DNA, was obtained from the blood of a specially selected Anunaki and processed in a “cleansing bath” " Shiru – sperm – was also taken from the young man.

The word "clay" comes from "TI-IT", translated as "that which accompanies life." A derivative of this word is “egg”. In addition, the texts note that what is called napishtu (the parallel biblical term Naphsh, which is usually not accurately translated as “soul”) was obtained from the blood of one of the gods.

Sumerian texts say that luck did not immediately favor the scientists, and as a result of experiments, ugly hybrids initially appeared. Finally they came to success. The successfully formed egg was then placed in the body of the goddess, whom Ninti agreed to become. As a result of a long pregnancy and caesarean section, the first man, Adam, was born.

Since a lot of industrial workers were needed for the mines, Eve was created to reproduce her own kind by cloning. Unfortunately, this can only be assumed; no descriptions of the details of cloning have yet been found in the Sumerian chronicles. But having passed on to us your image and ability to intellectual development, the Anunaki did not give us longevity. The Torah says about this: “Elohim said the phrase: “Adam became like one of us... And now, lest he stretch out his hand and take from the tree of life, and eat, and live forever.” And Adam and Eve were expelled from Eden!

More recently, as a result of thorough DNA research, Wesley Brown made an interesting discovery “about the mitochondrial Eve, common to all people on Earth,” who lived in Africa approximately 250,000 years ago. And it turned out that the first human being came from the very valley where, according to the Sumerians, we mined gold!

Later, when the women of the Earth acquired an attractive appearance, the Anunaki began to take them as wives, which also contributed to the development of the intellect of the next generations of people. The Bible of Moses says the following about this: “Then the sons of God saw the daughters of men, and they began to give birth to them. These are strong people who have been famous since ancient times.”

The New Explanatory Bible says the following about this: “This is one of the most difficult passages of the Bible to interpret; The main difficulty lies in determining who can be understood here as “sons of God.” And since the Bible of Moses does not directly say anything about the Anunnaki, the interpreters decided to consider the “sons of God” the descendants of Seth, the third son of Adam and Eve, who “were exponents of all that is good, sublime and good” - “Giants of the Spirit.” Well! If you don’t know about the content of the Sumerian chronicles, then this is still some kind of explanation.
Questions and answers.
1. Who could conduct mine development during the Stone Age?!
Archaeological research confirms that mining was carried out in South Africa during the Stone Age(!). Back in 1970, archaeologists discovered extensive gold mines in Swaziland, up to 20 meters deep. In 1988, an international group of physicists determined the age of the mines - from 80 to 100 thousand years.
2. How do wild tribes know about “artificial people”?
Zulu legends say that these mines were manned by flesh-and-blood slaves artificially created by the “first men.”
3. The second discovery of astronomers testifies - there was a planet Nibiru!
In addition to the above-mentioned discovery of a group of fragments moving along the desired trajectory, corresponding to the ideas of the Sumerians, the recent subsequent discovery of astronomers was no less surprising. Modern astronomical laws confirm that between Mars and Jupiter there must have been planets twice as large as the Earth! This planet was either destroyed as a result of a major catastrophe, or was not formed at all due to the gravitational influence of Jupiter.
4. The Sumerians’ claim about the “heavenly battle” 4 billion years ago is also most likely confirmed by science!
After the discovery of the fact that Uranus, Neptune and Pluto “lie on their sides”, and their satellites lie in a completely different plane, it became clear that collisions of celestial bodies changed the face of the solar system. This means that they could not have been satellites of these planets before the disaster. Where did they come from? Scientists believe that they were formed from the ejection of material from the planet Uranus during the collision.

It is clear that some destructive force of the object collided with these planets, so much so that it was able to rotate their axes. According to modern scientists, this catastrophe, which the Sumerians dubbed the “heavenly battle,” occurred 4 billion years ago. Note that the “heavenly battle” according to the Sumerians does not at all mean the notorious “star wars”. We are talking about a collision of celestial bodies of enormous mass or another similar cataclysm.

Note that the Sumerians quite accurately not only describe the appearance of the solar system before the “heavenly battle” (that is, 4 billion years ago), but also indicate the reasons for that dramatic period! True, it’s a small matter – deciphering figurative phrases and allegories! One thing is clear: the description of the solar system before the catastrophe, when it was still “young”, is information transmitted by someone! By whom?

Thus, the version that the Sumerian texts contain a description of the history of 4 billion years ago has a right to exist!

Personally, I am not a supporter of the above, not many fantastic opinions. I pay tribute to their courage. The truth is somewhere near.

Of course, one cannot deny the existence of more ancient written civilizations than the Sumerians, but little evidence of their existence has been found; the older the culture, the fewer traces remain, the more difficult it is to determine their exact age. According to the laws of history, civilizations periodically arise, flourish and disappear, just like empires. Not long ago, the empire of the Soviet Union collapsed, along with the countries of the Warsaw Pact and other countries of the “Red World”, and in one day, as a result of the strong-willed decision of the leaders of the 3 countries of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus, Apparently the time has come,

In thousands of years, scientists will study our civilization and wonder where we came from, invented the car, airplane, telephone, computer, etc. and in just about a hundred years. In an instant from the plow into space. Compared to thousands of years of historical process. Likewise, the Sumerians made a breakthrough in a short period of time of two hundred to three hundred years, it is almost impossible to track it, that’s the whole mystery.

Do not forget about the information field (data bank), the information from which reaches us.

In the southeastern part of Mesopotamia, on the banks of the Tigris and Euphrates, was the ancient region of Sumer, where in the 4th-3rd millennium BC. The Sumerians appeared - one of the first civilizations with their own writing. It took a lot of time to study it to figure out what was what.

Sumerian writing and language

On the territory of modern Iraq there was once a great and powerful civilization. These people were quite educated. They invented cuneiform writing, which our scientists took a long time to decipher. It is complicated in that it is not similar to any of the languages ​​that exist in the world. Also, the Sumerian people knew about wheel technology and had an understanding of baked bricks. It is also not established what language these ancient people spoke. The entire process is still under development.

Sumerian writing consisted of pictographs. At first, the number of signs in the language was about a thousand, but over time it was reduced to 600. Half of the signs were used simultaneously as logograms and syllabograms, and the second half simply as logograms. When reading, one ideogram sign meant one word. The writing of the Sumerians was quite complex and has not yet been sufficiently studied until today.

Culture of ancient civilization

Not all ancient cities can be proud of this kind of achievements that the Sumerians brought to our world. They are credited with the wheel and writing, agricultural implements and the potter's wheel, the irrigation system and brewing. Also, Sumerian literature has reached our time, namely the Epic of Gilgamesh, which is a collection of local legends. Many of them are fictitious and have no confirmation, and some are closely related to biblical stories, such as the story of Noah’s ark.

Sumerian architecture

There was not much wood and stone in Mesopotamia, so the first buildings were built with mud brick, clay, straw and sand. Liquid clay, sand and silt were used as a solution. Interesting places have reached our days. The ruins of secular palaces and religious buildings of that time have been preserved.

Particularly impressive are the temples that resemble a step pyramid. Residential houses of the local population were also excavated, which consisted of an open courtyard with numerous covered buildings around it. Often the open courtyard was replaced by a central room with a roof. This layout was selected due to the climatic characteristics of the region.

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Topic: “Sumerian civilization”

Introduction

The oldest civilization in the world is Mesopotamia (Interfluve), whose lands are located between the Tigris and Euphrates. Many peoples passed through Mesopotamia. Sumerians, Babylonians, Chaldeans lived in the south, Assyrians and Arameans lived in the north and west. The conquering tribes also managed to settle in certain areas of Mesopotamia. These are the Kutians, Semites, and Kassites. The center of the most ancient civilization is located in ancient Babylonia. Northern Babylonia was called Akkad, southern Babylonia was called Sumer. Assyria is located in the northern part of Mesopotamia. It was in Sumer at the end of 4 thousand BC. e. humanity leaves the stage of primitiveness and enters the era of antiquity, i.e. from “barbarism” to civilization, creating its own type of culture.

The Sumerians are a people who inhabited the lands of ancient Mesopotamia starting from the 4th millennium BC. The Sumerians are the first civilization on Earth. The ancient state and the greatest cities of this people were located in the Southern Mesopotamia, where the ancient Sumerians developed one of the greatest cultures that existed before our era. This people invented the cuneiform script. In addition, the ancient Sumerians invented the wheel and developed the technology of baked bricks. Over the course of its long history, this state, the Sumerian civilization, managed to achieve significant heights in science, art, military affairs and politics.

The assumption about the existence of the Sumerian civilization in the past was first expressed not by historians or archaeologists, but by linguists. During their first attempts to decipher Assyrian and Babylonian cuneiform texts, they encountered literally a mishmash of hieroglyphic, syllabic and alphabetic language symbols. This not only complicated the reading of texts that dated back to the 4th-3rd millennium BC. e., but also suggested that their language goes back to some much more ancient, originally hieroglyphic writing. This is how the first indirect, but completely scientific confirmation of information about the existence at the turn of the V-IV millennia BC appeared. e. in Lower Mesopotamia of the Sumerian people. Sumerian civilization state

Sumer is not only the most ancient and first written civilization, but also one of the most famous and mysterious civilizations.

1. Discovery of the Sumerian civilization

Mesopotamia has attracted travelers and explorers for centuries. This country is mentioned in the Bible, ancient geographers and historians talk about it. The history of Mesopotamia was little known for the reason that Islam later reigned here, so it was difficult for non-believers to get here. Interest in the past, the desire to know what came before us, have always been the main factors that motivate people to take actions, often risky and dangerous.

The very first studies of Mesopotamia were written in 1178 and published in 1543 in Hebrew, and 30 years later in Latin - with a detailed report that deals with the monuments of ancient Mesopotamia.

The first explorer of Mesopotamia was the rabbi from Tudela (Kingdom of Navarre) Benjamin, son of Jonah, who in 1160 went to Mesopotamia and wandered around the East for 30 years. The hills with the ruins buried in them protruding from the sands made a strong impression on him and aroused a passionate interest in the past of the ancient people.

The speculations of the first European travelers were not always plausible, but always fascinating. They excited and awakened the hope of finding Nineveh - the city about which the prophet Nahum said: “Nineveh is devastated! Who will regret her? Nineveh, in 612 BC. e. destroyed and set on fire by the Median troops, who defeated the hated Assyrian kings in bloody battles, cursed and forgotten, became the embodiment of a legend for Europeans. The search for Nineveh contributed to the discovery of Sumer. None of the travelers even imagined that the history of Mesopotamia goes back to such distant times. The Neapolitan merchant Pietro della Valle did not think about this when he set off on a trip to the East in 1616. We owe him information about bricks found on Mukaiyar Hill, covered with some amazing signs. Valle suggests that these are writings, and they should be read from left to right. It seemed to him that the bricks had been dried in the sun. As a result of excavations, Valle discovered that the base of the building was made of bricks baked in ovens, but no different in size from those dried in the sun. It was he who first delivered wedge-shaped writing to scientists, thereby marking the beginning of a two-hundred-year history of their reading.

The second traveler who came across traces of the Sumerians was the Dane Carsten Niebuhr, who on January 7, 1761. went to the East. He dreamed of collecting and studying as many wedge-shaped texts as possible, the mystery of which worried linguists and historians of that time. The fate of the Danish expedition turned out to be tragic: all its participants died. Only Niebuhr survived. His “Description of Travels to Arabia and Neighboring Countries,” published in 1778, became something of an encyclopedia of knowledge about Mesopotamia. Not only exotic lovers, but also scientists were engrossed in it. The main thing in this work were carefully executed copies of the Persepolis inscriptions. Niebuhr was the first to determine that inscriptions consisting of three distinctly demarcating columns represented three types of cuneiform. He called them 1st, 2nd and 3rd classes. Although Niebuhr was unable to read the inscriptions, his reasoning turned out to be extremely valuable and basically correct. He, for example, argued that class 1 represents the Old Persian script, consisting of 42 characters. Descendants should also be grateful to Niebuhr for the hypothesis that each of the writing classes represents a different language.

These materials turned out to be the key to solving the riddle of the existence of Sumer. On the threshold of the 19th century, the scientific world already had a sufficient number of cuneiform texts to move from the first, timid attempts to the final decipherment of the mysterious writing. So the Danish scientist Friedrich Christian Munter suggested that class 1 (according to Niebuhr) represents alphabetic writing, class 2 - syllables and class 3 - ideographic signs. He hypothesized that three multilingual inscriptions from Persepolis, immortalized by three writing systems, contain the same texts. These observations and hypotheses were correct, however, this was not enough to read and decipher these inscriptions - neither Munter nor Tychsen was able to read the Persepolis inscriptions. Only Grotefend, a teacher of Greek and Latin at the Lyceum in Göttingen, achieved what his predecessors could not do.

Grotefend accurately deciphered eight characters of the ancient Persian alphabet, and 30 years later the Frenchman Eugene Burnouf and the Norwegian Christian Lassen found the correct equivalents for almost all cuneiform characters, and thus the work of deciphering the 1st class inscriptions from Persepolis was basically completed.

However, scientists were haunted by the mystery of the 2nd and 3rd classes of writing, and the ancient Persian texts were still difficult to read. At the same time, major and diplomat Henry Creswick Rawlinson, who served in Persia, also makes an attempt to decipher the cuneiform inscriptions. His personal passion was archeology and comparative linguistics, which at that time had achieved its first successes. In order to continue the study of ancient languages ​​immortalized in cuneiform inscriptions, new texts were required. Rawlinson knew that on the old highway, near the city of Kermanshah, there was a high rock on which colossal mysterious images and signs were visible. And Rawlinson went to Behistun. Risking his life, he climbed a steep cliff on which huge bas-reliefs were carved, and began copying the inscription. Soon, Rawlinson sent the copied and translated text of two passages to the Asiatic Society of London. From London, this work was immediately sent to the Paris Asiatic Society so that the outstanding scientist Burnouf could familiarize himself with it. Rawlinson's work was appreciated very highly: the unknown major from Persia was awarded the title of honorary member of the Paris Asiatic Society.

However, Rawlinson does not consider his work finished: the two remaining undeciphered parts of the Behistun inscription haunt him. The fact is that the inscription on the Behistun rock, like the inscription in Persepolis, is carved in three languages. And Rawlinson, hanging on a rope over a deep abyss, copies the rest of the inscription. Now in the hands of scientists there were two lengthy texts, replete with proper names, and their content was known from the ancient Persian version. By 1855, Edwin Norris managed to decipher the second type of cuneiform, consisting of about a hundred syllabic signs. This part of the inscription was in Elamite.

The difficulties in deciphering the first two types of cuneiform turned out to be a mere trifle compared to the difficulties that arose when reading the third part of the inscriptions, filled, as it turned out, with Babylonian ideographic syllabary writing. One sign here denoted both a syllable and a whole word. Moreover, the same sign could convey different syllables and even different words. Therefore, it is not surprising that no one wanted to believe that someone could once invent such an intricate way of writing. And to the brave souls who admitted the existence of such a writing system, deciphering these signs, conveying all the ambiguity of a dead, long-forgotten language, seemed impossible.

Meanwhile, by the middle of the 19th century, linguistics had made great strides and linguists studying the structure of ancient languages ​​already had considerable experience behind them. Discussions centered not only on attempts to decipher Class 3 cuneiform characters, but also on their origins and the nature of the language in which the text was composed. Researchers thought about how ancient cuneiform is and what changes it has undergone over the centuries-old period of its existence. Through the joint efforts of a number of scientists, enormous difficulties in studying the Babylonian language were overcome. Archaeologists provided invaluable assistance in this work, delivering numerous tablets with inscriptions. In the mid-19th century, a new science was born - Assyriology, which studies the entire range of problems associated with ancient Mesopotamia. The amazing polysemy of cuneiform prompted scientists to look into the question of its origin. The assumption naturally suggested itself that the letter used by the Semitic peoples (Babylonians and Assyrians) was borrowed from some other people of non-Semitic origin.

And so on January 17, 1869, the prominent French linguist Jules Oppert, at a meeting of the French Society of Numismatics and Archeology, declared that the language immortalized on many tablets found in Mesopotamia is Sumerian! This means that the Sumerian people must have existed! Thus, it was not historians and archaeologists who were the first to clearly formulate the proof of the existence of Sumer. This was “calculated” and proven by linguists.

Oppert's words were received with restraint and distrust. At the same time, some in scientific circles spoke out in support of his hypothesis, which the scientist himself considered an axiom. Oppert's hypothesis prompted archaeologists to begin searching for material evidence of the existence of Sumer in Mesopotamia. A thorough analysis of the most ancient inscriptions could provide a lot in this regard. And so in 1871 Archibald Henry Says publishes the first Sumerian text - one of the inscriptions of King Shulgi. Two years later, François de Lenormand published the first volume of his Akkadian Studies with the Sumerian grammar he developed and new texts. Since 1889 the entire scientific world has recognized Sumerology as a field of science and the definition of “Sumerian” is accepted everywhere to denote the history, language and culture of this people.

There is nothing surprising in the fact that it is not archaeologists who wrest secrets from the sands of the Mesopotamian deserts past centuries, and it was not historians who so confidently declared to the whole world: Sumer is located here. The memory of Sumer and the Sumerians died thousands of years ago. The Greek chroniclers did not mention them. In the materials available to us from Mesopotamia, which humanity had before the era of great discoveries, we will not find a word about Sumer. Even the Bible - this source of inspiration for the first seekers of the cradle of Abraham - speaks of the Chaldean city of Ur. Not a word about the Sumerians! What happened, apparently, was inevitable: the initially emerging belief about the existence of a Sumerian city only later received documentary confirmation. This circumstance in no way detracts from the merits of travelers and archaeologists. Having fallen on the trail of Sumerian monuments, they had no idea what they were dealing with. After all, they were not looking for Sumer, but Babylon and Assyria! But if not for these people, linguists would never have been able to discover Sumer.

2. History of Sumerian civilization

It is believed that Southern Mesopotamia is not the best place in the world. Complete absence of forests and minerals. Swampiness, frequent floods, accompanied by changes in the course of the Euphrates due to low banks and, as a consequence, a complete lack of roads. The only thing there was in abundance there was reed, clay and water. However, in combination with fertile soil fertilized by floods, this was enough to ensure that at the very end of the 3rd millennium BC. the first city-states of ancient Sumer flourished there.

The first settlements in this territory appeared already in the 6th millennium BC. e. It is not clear where the Sumerians came to these lands and assimilated the local agricultural communities. Their legends speak of the eastern or southeastern origin of this people. They considered their oldest settlement to be Eredu, the southernmost of the cities of Mesopotamia, now the site of Abu Shahrain.

At the beginning of the third millennium BC. The smooth process of development of Mesopotamia receives a sharp acceleration. All changes in cultural and political life occur rapidly, spasmodically, over a very short period of time in historical retrospect. Main distinguishing feature This period is the rapid development of cities as centers of socio-political and cultural life. This period can be called the heyday of the Sumerian city-states. (In history it is called Uruk after one of the largest cities - Uruk).

Before the Uruk period, for a long time there was a process of increasing the scope of activity of temples, and the number of administrative functions belonging to them grew. All this led to the expansion of the temple administrative apparatus so much that in the early Uruk period the ruler's palace became an organization parallel to the temple. He owns lands, builds irrigation structures, collects taxes and maintains an army. At the same time, the rapid growth of cities around the temples begins...

At the beginning of the 3rd millennium BC. e. Mesopotamia was not yet politically unified and there were several dozen small city-states on its territory. The cities of Sumer, built on hills and surrounded by walls, became the main carriers of the Sumerian civilization. They consisted of neighborhoods or, rather, of individual villages, dating back to those ancient communities from the combination of which the Sumerian cities arose. The center of each quarter was the temple of the local god, who was the ruler of the entire quarter. The god of the main quarter of the city was considered the lord of the entire city. On the territory of the Sumerian city-states, along with the main cities, there were other settlements, some of which were conquered by force of arms by the main cities. They were politically dependent on the main city, whose population may have had greater rights than the population of these “suburbs.” The population of such city-states was small and in most cases did not exceed 40-50 thousand people. Between individual city-states there was a lot of undeveloped land, since there were no large and complex irrigation structures yet and the population was grouped near rivers, around irrigation structures of a local nature. In the interior parts of this valley, too far from any source of water, there remained at a later time considerable tracts of uncultivated land. In the extreme southwest of Mesopotamia, where the site of Abu Shahrain is now located, the city of Eridu was located. The legend about the emergence of the Sumerian culture was associated with Eridu, located on the shores of the “waving sea” (and now located at a distance of about 110 km from the sea). According to later legends, Eridu was also the oldest political center of the country. So far, we know best the ancient culture of Sumer on the basis of the already mentioned excavations of the El Oboid hill, located approximately 18 km northeast of Eridu. 4 km east of the El-Obeid hill was the city of Ur, which played a prominent role in the history of Sumer. To the north of Ur, also on the banks of the Euphrates, lay the city of Larsa, which probably arose somewhat later. To the northeast of Larsa, on the banks of the Tigris, Lagash was located, which left the most valuable historical sources and played an important role in the history of Sumer in the 3rd millennium BC. e., although a later legend, reflected in the list of royal dynasties, does not mention him at all. The constant enemy of Lagash, the city of Umma, was located to the north of it. From this city, valuable documents of economic reporting have come down to us, which are the case basis for determining the social system of Sumer. Along with the city of Umma, the city of Uruk, on the Euphrates, played an exceptional role in the history of the unification of the country. Here, during excavations, an ancient culture was discovered that replaced the El-Obeid culture, and the most ancient written monuments were found, showing the pictographic origins of the Sumerian cuneiform writing. North of Uruk, on the banks of the Euphrates, was the city of Shuruppak, where Ziusudra (Utnapishtim) - the hero - came from Sumerian flood myth. Almost in the center of Mesopotamia, somewhat south of the bridge where the two rivers now most closely converge with each other, was located on the Euphrates Nippur, the central sanctuary of all Sumer. But Nippur seems to have never been the center of any state of serious political importance. In the northern part of Mesopotamia, on the banks of the Euphrates, there was the city of Kish, where during excavations in the 20s of our century many monuments were found dating back to the Sumerian period in the history of the northern part of Mesopotamia. In the north of Mesopotamia, on the banks of the Euphrates, there was the city of Sippar. According to the later Sumerian tradition, the city of Sippar was one of the leading cities of Mesopotamia already in ancient times. Outside the valley there were also several ancient cities, the historical destinies of which were closely intertwined with the history of Mesopotamia. One of these centers was the city of Mari on the middle reaches of the Euphrates. In the lists of royal dynasties compiled at the end of the 3rd millennium, the dynasty from Mari is also mentioned, which allegedly ruled the entire Mesopotamia. The city of Eshnunna played a significant role in the history of Mesopotamia. The city of Eshnunna served as a link for Sumerian cities in trade with the mountain tribes of the North-East. An intermediary in the trade of Sumerian cities. the northern regions were the city of Ashur on the middle reaches of the Tigris, later the center of the Assyrian state. Numerous Sumerian merchants probably settled here in very ancient times, bringing elements of Sumerian culture here. Relocation of Semites to Mesopotamia. The presence of several Semitic words in ancient Sumerian texts indicates very early relations between the Sumerians and pastoral Semitic tribes. Then Semitic tribes appear within the territory inhabited by the Sumerians. Already in the middle of the 3rd millennium in the north of Mesopotamia, Semites began to act as heirs and continuers of Sumerian culture. The oldest of the cities founded by the Semites (much later than the most important Sumerian cities were founded) was Akkad, located on the Euphrates, probably not far from Kish. Akkad became the capital of the state, which was the first unifier of the entire Mesopotamia. The enormous political significance of Akkad is evident from the fact that even after the fall of the Akkadian kingdom, the northern part of Mesopotamia continued to be called Akkad, and the southern part retained the name Sumer. Among the cities founded by the Semites we should probably also include Isin, which is believed to have been located near Nippur. The most significant role in the history of the country fell to the lot of the youngest of these cities - Babylon, which was located on the banks of the Euphrates, southwest of the city of Kish. The political and cultural importance of Babylon grew continuously over the centuries, starting from the 2nd millennium BC. e. In the 1st millennium BC. e. its splendor so eclipsed all other cities in the country that the Greeks began to call the entire Mesopotamia Babylonia by the name of this city. The oldest documents in the history of Sumer. Excavations of recent decades make it possible to trace the development of productive forces and changes in production relations in the states of Mesopotamia long before their unification in the second half of the 3rd millennium BC. e. Excavations gave science lists of the royal dynasties that ruled in the states of Mesopotamia. These monuments were written in Sumerian at the beginning of the 2nd millennium BC. e. in the states of Isin and Larsa based on a list compiled two hundred years earlier in the city of Ur. These royal lists were heavily influenced by the local traditions of the cities in which the lists were compiled or revised. Nevertheless, taking this into account critically, the lists that have reached us can still be used as the basis for establishing a more or less accurate chronology of the ancient history of Sumer. For the most distant times, the Sumerian tradition is so legendary that it has almost no historical significance. Already from the data of Berossus (a Babylonian priest of the 3rd century BC, who compiled a consolidated work on the history of Mesopotamia in Greek), it was known that the Babylonian priests divided the history of their country into two periods - “before the flood” and “after the flood” . Berossus in his list of dynasties “before the flood” includes 10 kings who ruled for 432 thousand years. Equally fantastic is the number of years of reign of the kings “before the flood”, noted in the lists compiled at the beginning of the 2nd millennium in Isin and Lars. The number of years of reign of the kings of the first dynasties “after the flood” is also fantastic. During excavations of the ruins of ancient Uruk and the Jemdet-Nasr hill, documents from the economic records of the temples were found that preserved, in whole or in part, the picture (pictographic) appearance of the letter. From the first centuries of the 3rd millennium, the history of Sumerian society can be reconstructed not only from material monuments, but also from written sources: the writing of Sumerian texts began at this time to develop into the “wedge-shaped” writing characteristic of Mesopotamia. So, on the basis of tablets excavated in Ur and dating back to the beginning of the 3rd millennium BC. e., it can be assumed that the ruler of Lagash was recognized as king here at that time; Along with him, the tablets mention the sanga, that is, the high priest of Ur. Perhaps other cities mentioned in the Ur tablets were also subordinate to the king of Lagash. But around 2850 BC. e. Lagash lost its independence and apparently became dependent on Shuruppak, who by this time began to play a major political role. Documents indicate that Shuruppak's warriors garrisoned a number of cities in Sumer: in Uruk, in Nippur, in Adab, located on the Euphrates southeast of Nippur, in Umma and Lagash. Economic life. Agricultural products were undoubtedly the main wealth of Sumer, but along with agriculture, crafts also began to play a relatively large role. The oldest documents from Ur, Shuruppak and Lagash mention representatives of various crafts. Excavations of the tombs of the 1st royal dynasty of Ur (circa 27th-26th centuries) showed the high skill of the builders of these tombs. In the tombs themselves, along with a large number of killed members of the entourage of the deceased, possibly male and female slaves, helmets, axes, daggers and spears made of gold, silver and copper were found, indicating the high level of Sumerian metallurgy. New methods of metal processing are being developed - embossing, engraving, granulating. The economic importance of the metal increased more and more. The art of goldsmiths is evidenced by the beautiful jewelry that was found in the royal tombs of Ur. Since deposits of metal ores were completely absent in Mesopotamia, the presence of gold, silver, copper and lead there already in the first half of the 3rd millennium BC. e. indicates the significant role of exchange in Sumerian society of that time. In exchange for wool, fabric, grain, dates and fish, the Sumerians also received amen and wood. Most often, of course, either gifts were exchanged, or half-trading, half-robbery expeditions were carried out. But one must think that even then, from time to time, genuine trade was taking place, conducted by tamkars - trading agents of the temples, the king and the slave-holding nobility surrounding him. Exchange and trade led to the emergence of monetary circulation in Sumer, although at its core the economy continued to remain subsistence. Already from the documents from Shuruppak it is clear that copper acted as a measure of value, and subsequently this role was played by silver. By the first half of the 3rd millennium BC. e. There are references to cases of purchase and sale of houses and lands. Along with the seller of land or house, who received the main payment, the texts also mention the so-called “eaters” of the purchase price. These were obviously the neighbors and relatives of the seller, who were given some additional payment. These documents also reflected the dominance of customary law, when all representatives of rural communities had the right to land. The scribe who completed the sale also received payment. The standard of living of the ancient Sumerians was still low. Among the huts of the common people, the houses of the nobility stood out, but not only the poorest population and slaves, but also people of average income at that time huddled in tiny houses made of mud brick, where mats, bundles of reeds that replaced seats, and pottery made up almost all the furniture and utensils . The dwellings were incredibly crowded, they were located in a narrow space inside the city walls; at least a quarter of this space was occupied by the temple and the ruler’s palace with outbuildings attached to them. The city contained large, carefully constructed government granaries. One such granary was excavated in the city of Lagash in a layer dating back to approximately 2600 BC. e. Sumerian clothing consisted of loincloths and coarse woolen cloaks or a rectangular piece of cloth wrapped around the body. Primitive tools - hoes with copper tips, stone grain graters - which were used by the mass of the population, made work unusually difficult. Food was meager: the slave received about a liter of barley grain per day. The living conditions of the ruling class were, of course, different, but even the nobility did not have more refined food than fish, barley and occasionally wheat cakes or porridge, sesame oil, dates, beans, garlic and, not every day, lamb.

Although a number of temple archives have come down from ancient Sumer, including those dating back to the period of the Jemdet-Nasr culture, the social relations reflected in the documents of only one of the Lagash temples of the 24th century have been sufficiently studied. BC e. According to one of the most common Soviet science points of view, the lands surrounding the Sumerian city were divided at that time into naturally irrigated fields and into high fields that required artificial irrigation. In addition, there were also fields in the swamp, that is, in the area that did not dry out after the flood and therefore required additional drainage work in order to create soil suitable for agriculture. Part of the naturally irrigated fields was the “property” of the gods, and as the temple economy passed into the hands of their “deputy” - the king, it became actually royal. Obviously, the high fields and “swamp” fields, until the moment of their cultivation, were, along with the steppe, that “land without a master”, which is mentioned in one of the inscriptions of the ruler of Lagash, Entemena. Cultivation of high fields and “swamp” fields required a lot of labor and money, so relations of hereditary ownership gradually developed here. Apparently, it is these humble owners of the high fields in Lagash that the texts dating back to the 24th century speak of. BC e. The emergence of hereditary ownership contributed to the destruction from within the collective farming of rural communities. True, at the beginning of the 3rd millennium this process was still very slow. Since ancient times, the lands of rural communities have been located on naturally irrigated areas. Of course, not all naturally irrigated land was distributed among rural communities. They had their own plots on that land, in the fields of which neither the king nor the temples conducted their own farming. Only lands that were not in the direct possession of the ruler or the gods were divided into plots, individual or collective. Individual plots were distributed among the nobility and representatives of the state and temple apparatus, while collective plots were retained by rural communities. Adult men of the communities were organized into separate groups, which acted together in war and agricultural work, under the command of their elders. In Shuruppak they were called gurush, i.e. “strong”, “well done”; in Lagash in the middle of the 3rd millennium they were called shublugal - “subordinates of the king.” According to some researchers, the “subordinates of the king” were not members of the community, but workers of the temple economy already separated from the community, but this assumption remains controversial. Judging by some inscriptions, “the king’s subordinates” do not necessarily have to be considered as personnel of any temple. They could also work on the land of the king or ruler. We have reason to believe that in case of war, the “king’s subordinates” were included in the army of Lagash. The plots given to individuals, or perhaps in some cases to rural communities, were small. Even the allotments of the nobility at that time amounted to only a few tens of hectares. Some plots were given free of charge, while others were given for a tax equal to 1/6 -1/8 of the harvest. The owners of the plots worked in the fields of temple (later also royal) farms for usually four months. Draft cattle, as well as plows and other tools of labor, were given to them from the temple household. They also cultivated their fields with the help of temple cattle, since they could not keep cattle on their small plots. For four months of work in the temple or royal household, they received barley, a small amount of emmer, wool, and the rest of the time (i.e., for eight months) they fed on the harvest from their allotment. Slaves worked all year round. Captives captured in war were turned into slaves; slaves were also bought by tamkars (trading agents of temples or the king) outside the state of Lagash. Their labor was used in construction and irrigation work. They protected fields from birds and were also used in gardening and partly in livestock farming. Their labor was also used in fishing, which continued to play a significant role. The conditions in which the slaves lived were extremely difficult, and therefore the mortality rate among them was enormous. The life of a slave was of little value. There is evidence of the sacrifice of slaves. Wars for hegemony in Sumer. With the further development of the lowland lands, the borders of small Sumerian states begin to touch, and a fierce struggle unfolds between individual states for land and for the main areas of irrigation structures. This struggle fills the history of the Sumerian states already in the first half of the 3rd millennium BC. e. The desire of each of them to seize control of the entire irrigation network of Mesopotamia led to a struggle for hegemony in Sumer. In the inscriptions of this time there are two different titles for the rulers of the states of Mesopotamia - lugal and patesi (some researchers read this title ensi). The first of the titles, as one might assume, denoted the independent head of the Sumerian city-state. The term patesi, which originally may have been a priestly title, denoted the ruler of a state that recognized the dominance of some other political center over itself. Such a ruler basically played only the role of the high priest in his city, while political power belonged to the lugal of the state, to which he, patesi, was subordinate. Lugal - the king of some Sumerian city-state - was by no means the king over the other cities of Mesopotamia. Therefore, in Sumer in the first half of the 3rd millennium there were several political centers, the heads of which bore the title of king - lugal. One of these royal dynasties of Mesopotamia strengthened in the 27th-26th centuries. BC e. or a little earlier in Ur, after Shuruppak lost his former dominant position. Until this time, the city of Ur was dependent on nearby Uruk, which occupies one of the first places in the royal lists. For a number of centuries, judging by the same royal lists, the city of Kish was of great importance. Mentioned above was the legend of the struggle between Gilgamesh, king of Uruk, and Akka, king of Kish, which is part of the cycle of Sumerian epic poems about the knight Gilgamesh. The power and wealth of the state created by the first dynasty of the city of Ur are evidenced by the monuments it left behind. The above-mentioned royal tombs with their rich inventory - remarkable weapons and decorations - testify to the development of metallurgy and improvements in the processing of metals (copper and gold). From the same tombs, interesting monuments of art have come down to us, such as, for example, a “standard” (more precisely, a portable canopy) with images of military scenes made using mosaic techniques. Objects of applied art of high perfection were also excavated. Tombs also attract attention as monuments of construction skills, for we find in them the use of such architectural forms as vault and arch. In the middle of the 3rd millennium BC. e. Kish also laid claim to dominance in Sumer. But then Lagash moved forward. Under the patesi of Lagash Eannatum (about 247.0), the army of Umma was defeated in a bloody battle when the patesi of this city, supported by the kings of Kish and Akshaka, dared to violate the ancient border between Lagash and Umma. Eannatum immortalized his victory in an inscription that he carved on a large stone slab covered with images; it represents Ningirsu, the main god of the city of Lagash, throwing a net over the army of enemies, the victorious advance of the army of Lagash, his triumphant return from the campaign, etc. The Eannatum slab is known in science as the “Kite Steles” - after one of its images, which depicts a battlefield where kites are tormenting the corpses of killed enemies. As a result of the victory, Eannatum restored the border and returned fertile areas of land previously captured by enemies. Eannatum also managed to win a victory over the eastern neighbors of Sumer - over the highlanders of Elam. Eannatum's military successes, however, did not ensure lasting peace for Lagash. After his death, the war with the Ummah resumed. It was finished victoriously by Entemena, the nephew of Eannatum, who also successfully repelled the raids of the Elamites. Under his successors, the weakening of Lagash began, again, apparently, submitting to Kish. But the dominance of the latter was also short-lived, perhaps due to the increased pressure of the Semitic tribes. In the fight against the southern cities, Kish also began to suffer heavy defeats.

The growth of productive forces and the constant wars that were fought between the states of Sumer created the conditions for improvement military equipment. We can judge its development based on a comparison of two remarkable monuments. The first, more ancient of them, is the “standard” noted above, found in one of the tombs of Ur. It was decorated on four sides with mosaic images. The obverse depicts scenes of war, and the reverse depicts scenes of triumph after the victory. On the front side, in the lower tier, chariots are depicted, drawn by four donkeys, trampling with their hooves prostrate enemies. In the back of the four-wheeled chariot stood a driver and a fighter armed with an axe, they were covered by the front panel of the body. A quiver of darts was attached to the front of the body. In the second tier, on the left, infantry is depicted, armed with heavy short spears, advancing in sparse formation on the enemy. The heads of the warriors, like the heads of the charioteer and chariot fighter, are protected by helmets. The body of the foot soldiers was protected by a long cloak, perhaps made of leather. On the right are lightly armed warriors finishing off wounded enemies and driving away prisoners. Presumably, the king and the high nobility surrounding him fought on chariots. Further development of Sumerian military equipment went along the line of strengthening heavily armed infantry, which could successfully replace chariots. This new stage in the development of the armed forces of Sumer is evidenced by the already mentioned “Stela of the Vultures” of Eannatum. One of the images of the stele shows a tightly closed phalanx of six rows of heavily armed infantry at the moment of its crushing attack on the enemy. The fighters are armed with heavy spears. The fighters' heads are protected by helmets, and the torso from the neck to the feet is covered with large quadrangular shields, so heavy that they were held by special shield bearers. The chariots on which the nobility had previously fought have almost disappeared. Now the nobility fought on foot, in the ranks of a heavily armed phalanx. The weapons of the Sumerian phalangites were so expensive that only people with a relatively large land plot could have them. People who had small plots of land served in the army lightly armed. Obviously, their combat value was considered small: they only finished off an already defeated enemy, and the outcome of the battle was decided by a heavily armed phalanx.

In the field of medicine, the Sumerians had very high standards. The library of King Ashurbanipal, found by Layard in Nineveh, had a clear order, it had a large medical department, which contained thousands of clay tablets. All medical terms were based on words borrowed from the Sumerian language. Medical procedures were described in special reference books, which contained information about hygiene rules, operations, for example, cataract removal, and the use of alcohol for disinfection during surgical operations. Sumerian medicine was distinguished by a scientific approach to making a diagnosis and prescribing a course of treatment, both therapeutic and surgical.

The Sumerians were excellent travelers and explorers - they are also credited with inventing the world's first ships. One Akkadian dictionary of Sumerian words contained no less than 105 designations for various types of ships - according to their size, purpose and type of cargo.

Even more amazingly, the Sumerians had mastered alloying, a process by which different metals were combined by heating in a furnace. The Sumerians learned to produce bronze, a hard but easily workable metal that changed the entire course of human history.

Today we can rightfully say that the Sumerian civilization laid the foundations of the modern education system. The first clay tablets with school texts were found by archaeologists during excavations at the site of the ancient Sumerian city of Shuruppaka. They date back to 2500 BC. Currently, most of them have been deciphered. The information contained in them indicates that the Sumerian system of education was very similar to the modern one.

The high level of development of Ancient Sumer required a large number of literate people. Professional scribes were trained in temple schools that existed in all major cities. In Mari, Nippur, Sippar and Ur, archaeologists during excavations discovered classrooms of such institutions. The curriculum in temple schools was very extensive. The training lasted several years, and students received both the basic fundamentals of writing and arithmetic, as well as more fundamental knowledge from the fields of mathematics, linguistics, literature, geography, mineralogy, and astronomy. That is, a diligent and capable student received both primary and higher education. True, even then education became the privilege of the wealthy class and priests.

One of the first clay tablets deciphered by scientists tells about the daily routine of a Sumerian schoolboy. The students spent the whole day in school classes - "edubba". The head of the school, the “ummia,” and several teachers monitored attendance and academic performance. Their authority was indisputable. Discipline and daily routine were strictly maintained at school. Corporal punishment with canes was practiced for violations. Many students studied away from home, and a kind of “boarding house” was created for them. But the teaching was not easy for the others either. Early rise, quick breakfast, two buns for lunch and the student is in a hurry to go to school; for being late they were also punished with canes. The training program consisted of two directions - literary-humanitarian and scientific-technical. The entire learning process was divided into several stages. At first, schoolchildren were taught “grammar” - copying icons. Phonetics and meanings of ideograms were studied...

The Sumerians measured the rising and setting of visible planets and stars relative to the earth's horizon using the heliocentric system. These people had well-developed mathematics, they knew and widely used astrology. Interestingly, the Sumerians had the same astrological system as now: they divided the sphere into 12 parts (12 houses of the Zodiac) of thirty degrees each. The mathematics of the Sumerians was a cumbersome system, but it made it possible to calculate fractions and multiply numbers up to millions, extract roots and raise to powers.

Was there something in the daily life of the Sumerians that distinguished them from many other peoples? So far, no clear distinguishing evidence has been found. Each family had its own yard next to the house, surrounded by dense bushes. The bush was called "surbatu". With the help of this bush it was possible to protect some crops from the scorching sun and cool the house itself. A special jug of water was always installed near the entrance to the house, intended for washing hands. Equality can be traced between men and women. Archaeologists and historians are inclined to believe that, despite the possible influence of the surrounding peoples, in whom patriarchy prevailed, the ancient Sumerians took equal rights from their gods. The pantheon of Sumerian gods in the stories described gathered in “heavenly councils.” Both gods and goddesses were equally present at the councils. Only later , when stratification is visible in society, and farmers become debtors to the richer Sumerians, they give their daughters under a marriage contract, respectively, without their consent. But, despite this, every woman could be present at the ancient Sumerian court, had the right to own a personal seal... During the birth of the Sumerian civilization, all efforts were devoted to the construction of temples and digging of canals. Cities were more like villages, and people were divided into two layers: workers and priests. But the cities grew, became richer, and the need for new professions arose.

At first, artisans belonged to the king or the temple. The largest workshops were at the royal court and on the temple grounds. Then some particularly outstanding masters began to be endowed with earthly allotments, many began to open shops and carry out private, and not just temple or royal orders. As they grew rich, they opened workshops. Construction, pottery, and jewelry developed at an accelerated pace. Following the receipt of orders from private traders, trade with neighboring countries began to improve, and products began to be produced taking into account exports.

Many artisans worked for family clans. The story of one rich family has been preserved. The head of the family headed two industries at once - cloth and woven. Plus he owned a shipyard. Several large workshops were also headed by his wife. Children also participated in the trade and looked after production. The merchant was so lucky that the king gave him an incredibly generous gift, allocating several hundred orchards outside the city...

Sumerian society developed at a rapid pace. Labor productivity increases, and the Sumerians begin to show the first signs of slavery. Slavery as such was not open and universal; it was hidden in a single family and disguised in every possible way. Clay tablets with codes of the ancient Sumerian people that have survived to this day have helped scientists study the family law of those times. Thus, one inscription clearly indicated the right of the father of the family to sell his children into slavery (for service). This practice of selling children was a frequent, if not habitual, occurrence in Sumerian families. Parents could sell either a small child or an older one. The very fact of the sale was necessarily recorded in special documents. The Sumerians were very attentive to issues of purchase and sale, exchange, and always kept careful calculations of all costs and profits. What was the disguise of slavery? The fact is that the child was adopted, but the future family had to pay a certain amount of money for the adoption. Daughters were sold more often. In Sumerian documents, the fact of sale was referred to as the “wife price,” although historians are more inclined to call it an ancient marriage contract.

The development of productivity led to the stratification of society; the less wealthy were forced to turn to the rich for a loan. The loan was issued at interest. In case of non-payment, the borrower fell into debt bondage, followed by slavery, that is, in order to repay his debt, he went to serve the creditor. Another factor in the origin of slavery among the ancient Sumerians was numerous wars in Mesopotamia.

With each military invasion there followed the seizure of both territory and population, the latter acquiring the status of slaves. Captives in Sumerian writing were designated as "a person from mountainous country"Archaeologists have established that the Sumerians waged wars with the population of the mountains located in the east of Mesopotamia.

A Sumerian woman had almost equal rights with a man. It turns out that it is far from our contemporaries who were able to prove their right to a voice and to an equal social position. At a time when people believed that the gods lived nearby, hated and loved like people, women were in the same position as today. It was in the Middle Ages that female representatives apparently became lazy and preferred embroidery and balls to participation in public life. Historians explain the equality of Sumerian women with men by the equality of gods and goddesses. People lived in their likeness, and what was good for the gods was also good for people. True, legends about gods are also created by people, therefore, most likely, equal rights on earth appeared earlier than equality in the pantheon.

A woman had the right to express her opinion, she could get a divorce if her husband did not suit her, however, they still preferred to marry off their daughters under marriage contracts, and the parents themselves selected the husband, sometimes in early childhood, while the kids were small. In rare cases, a woman chose her husband herself, relying on the advice of her ancestors. Each woman could defend her rights in court, and always carried her own small seal-signature with her. She could have her own business. The woman supervised the upbringing of children and had a dominant opinion in resolving controversial issues concerning the child. She owned her property. She was not covered by her husband's debts incurred before marriage. She could have her own slaves who did not obey her husband. In the absence of the husband and in the presence of minor children, the wife disposed of all property. If there was an adult son, responsibility was shifted to him. If such a clause was not stipulated in the marriage contract, the husband, in the case of large loans, could sell the wife into slavery for three years to work off the debt. Or sell it forever. After the death of the husband, the wife, as now, received her share of his property. True, if the widow was going to get married again, then her part of the inheritance was given to the children of the deceased.

The Sumerian religion was a fairly clear system of celestial hierarchy, although some scientists believe that the pantheon of gods was not systematized. The gods were led by the air god Enlil, who divided heaven and earth. The creators of the universe in the Sumerian pantheon were considered AN (celestial principle) and KI (masculine principle). The basis of mythology was the ME energy, which meant the prototype of all living things, emitted by gods and temples. The gods in Sumer were represented as people. Their relationships include matchmaking and war, rape and love, deception and anger. There is even a myth about a man who possessed the goddess Inanna in a dream. It is noteworthy that the entire myth is imbued with sympathy for man. The Sumerians had a peculiar idea of ​​​​Paradise; there was no place for man in it. Sumerian Paradise is the abode of the gods. It is believed that the views of the Sumerians were reflected in later religions.

With varying success, power in Ancient Sumer passes to one or another dynastic ruler. But none of them succeeds in creating a unified Sumerian state. At the first stage, the richest and most powerful were the rulers of Ur, who, in addition to seizing temple lands, were actively engaged in trade.

Then power in Ancient Sumer passes to the city of Lagash. But his reign was short-lived.

The ruler of Umma Lugalzagesi completely ravages Lagash, destroying its settlements and temples. And, passing from the Lower (Persian Gulf) to the Upper Sea (Mediterranean Sea), it captures all of Sumer and the north of Mesopotamia. Here he has a new, more dangerous rival than the Sumerian rulers. His name is Sargon (originally Sharum-ken), who creates his own kingdom in the north of Mesopotamia with its capital in the city of Akkad. In modern terms, the confrontation between Lugalzagesi and Sargon is a struggle between a conservative and a radical, and the further course of development of Southern Mesopotamia depended on who wins.

Lugalzagesi’s “political program” was based on the traditional Sumerian path. The struggle of dynastic leaders for possession of all power and all accumulated wealth ended in the victory of one of them. The hometown is the “center”, the remaining cities are the “province” with a corresponding redistribution of wealth. This was followed by a confrontation between the victorious leader and the community, which demanded submission to community norms and advocated the eradication of autocracy. In addition, the question was raised about vesting high priests and community elders additional rights and benefits. The arrival of the new ruler to power was marked by justice only at first.

From a work on the history of Mesopotamia, written in Greek by the Babylonian scientist and priest of the god Marduk, Berossus, who lived in the 4th-3rd centuries. BC e. It is known that the Babylonians divided history into two periods - before the flood and after the flood. He reported that 10 kings before the flood ruled the country for 43,200 years, and the first kings after the flood also reigned for several thousand years. His royal list was perceived as a legend. The efforts of scientists were crowned with success: among numerous cuneiform tablets, several fragments of ancient lists of kings were discovered. The Sumerian King List was compiled no later than the end of the 3rd millennium BC. e., during the reign of the so-called third dynasty of Ur. When compiling the version of the “List” known to science, the scribes undoubtedly used dynastic lists, which were kept for centuries in individual city-states. As a result of many reasons, the Tsar's List contains many inaccuracies and mechanical errors. Through painstaking and complex research, scientists finally found a solution to the puzzle: how to place separate simultaneously reigning dynasties, which the royal list says they followed one after another. The “Royal List” reports that after the flood the kingdom was in Kish and that 23 kings ruled here for 24,510 years.

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Analysis of Eurasia as a specific civilization in the history of mankind, its geographical features and history of formation. The most ancient civilizations of Eurasia, located on the shores of numerous seas: Egypt, Mesopotamia, Assyria, Judea.

Civilization arose in the 65th century. back.
Civilization stopped in the 38th century. back.
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The civilization existed from 4500 BC. before 1750 BC in the southern part of Mesopotamia in the territory of modern Iraq..

The Sumerian civilization dissolved because the Sumerians ceased to exist as a single people.

The Sumerian civilization arose in 4-3 thousand BC.

Sumerian race: White Alpine mixed with white Mediterranean race..

Sumerian is a society that is related and not connected in any way with previous ones, but connected with subsequent societies..

The Sumerians are one of the oldest non-autochthonous people of Mesopotamia..

Genetic connections of the Sumerians have not been established.

The name is given after the region of Sumer, which did not cover the entire country with the Sumerian population, but initially, the area around the city of Nippur.

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The genetic connections of the Sumerians have not been established.

The Semitic civilization constantly interacted with the Sumerian, which led to the gradual mixing of their cultures, and subsequently their civilizations. After the fall of Akkad, under pressure from barbarians from the northeast, peace was maintained only in Lagash. But the Sumerians managed to once again raise their political prestige and revive their culture during the Ur dynasty (around 2060).

After the fall of this dynasty in 1950, the Sumerians were never able to take political primacy. With the rise of Hammurabi, control of these territories passed to Babylon and the Sumerians as a nation disappeared from the face of the earth.

The Amorites, Semites by origin, commonly known as the Babylonians, conquered the Sumerian culture and civilization. With the exception of language, the Babylonian educational system, religion, mythology and literature were virtually identical to those of the Sumerians. And since these Babylonians, in turn, were greatly influenced by their less cultured neighbors, especially the Assyrians, Hittites, Urartians and Canaanites, they, like the Sumerians themselves, helped plant the seeds of Sumerian culture throughout the Ancient Near East.

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Sumerian City-State. It is a sociopolitical entity that in Sumer developed from villages and small settlements in the second half of the 4th millennium BC. and flourished throughout the 3rd millennium. The city with its free citizens and general assembly, its aristocracy and priesthood, clients and slaves, its patron god and its viceroy and representative on earth, the king, farmers, artisans and merchants, its temples, walls and gates existed everywhere in the ancient world, he Indus to the Western Mediterranean.

Some of its specific features may have varied from place to place, but on the whole it bears a very close resemblance to its early Sumerian prototype, and there is reason to conclude that very many of its elements and analogues are rooted in Sumer. Of course, it is likely that the city would have found its existence regardless of the existence of Sumer.

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Sumer, the land that the classical era called Babylonia, occupied the southern part of Mesopotamia and geographically roughly coincided with modern Iraq, stretching from Baghdad in the north to the Persian Gulf in the south. The territory of Sumer occupied about 10 thousand square miles, slightly larger than the state of Massachusetts. The climate here is extremely hot and dry, and the soils are naturally parched, eroded and infertile. This is a river plain, and therefore it is devoid of minerals and poor in stone. The swamps were overgrown with powerful reeds, but there were no forests and, accordingly, no wood here.

This was the land that, they say, the Lord renounced (in the Bible - displeasing to God), hopeless, doomed to poverty and desolation. But the people who inhabited it and were known by the 3rd millennium BC. like the Sumerians, was endowed with an extraordinary creative intellect and an enterprising, determined spirit. Despite the natural deficiencies of the land, they turned Sumer into a veritable Garden of Eden and created what was probably the first advanced civilization in human history.

The basic unit of Sumerian society was the family, whose members were closely bound together by bonds of love, respect and common responsibilities. The marriage was organized by the parents, and the engagement was considered completed as soon as the groom presented the bride's father with a wedding gift. The engagement was often confirmed by a contract written on a tablet. Although marriage was thus reduced to a practical transaction, there is evidence that the Sumerians were no strangers to premarital love affairs.

A woman in Sumer was endowed with certain rights: she could own property, participate in affairs, and be a witness. But her husband could easily divorce her, and if she turned out to be childless, he had the right to have a second wife. Children were completely subject to the will of their parents, who could deprive them of their inheritance and even sell them into slavery. But in the normal course of events, they were selflessly loved and pampered, and after the death of their parents, they inherited all their property. Adopted children were not uncommon, and they too were treated with the utmost care and attention.

Law played a large role in the Sumerian city. Starting around 2700 BC. we find deeds of sales, including fields, houses and slaves.

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Judging by the available evidence, both archaeological and literary, the world known to the Sumerians extended to India in the East; to the north - to Anatolia, the Caucasus region and the more western territories of Central Asia; to the Mediterranean Sea in the west, and Cyprus and even Crete can apparently be included here; and to Egypt and Ethiopia in the south. Today there is no evidence that the Sumerians had any contact or information about the peoples who inhabited Northern Asia, China or the European continent. The Sumerians themselves divided the world into four ubdas, i.e. four districts or areas that roughly corresponded to the four points of the compass.

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Sumerian culture belongs to two centers: Eridu in the south and Nippur in the north. Eridu and Nippur are sometimes called the two opposite poles of Sumerian culture.

The history of civilization is divided into 2 stages:

period of the Ubaid culture, which is characterized by the beginning of the construction of an irrigation system, population growth and the emergence of large settlements that turn into city-states. A city-state is a self-governing city with its surrounding territory.

INThe second stage of the Sumerian civilization is associated with the Uruk culture (from the city of Uruk). This period is characterized by: the emergence of monumental architecture, the development of agriculture, ceramics, the appearance of the first writing in human history (pictograms-drawings), this writing is called cuneiform and was produced on clay tablets. It has been used for about 3 thousand years.

Signs of Sumerian civilization:

Writing. It was first borrowed by the Phoenicians and on its basis they created their own writing, consisting of 22 consonant letters; the writing was borrowed from the Phoenicians by the Greeks, who added vowels. The Latin language was largely inspired by Greek, and many modern European languages ​​are based on Latin.

The Sumerians discovered copper, which began the Bronze Age.

The first elements of statehood. In peacetime, the Sumerians were ruled by a council of elders, and during the war, a supreme ruler, the Lugal, was elected, gradually their power remains in peacetime and the first ruling dynasties appear.

The Sumerians laid the foundations of Temple architecture; a special type of temple appeared there - the ziggurat, a temple in the form of a stepped pyramid.

The Sumerians carried out the first reforms in human history. The first reformer was the ruler of Urukavin.He prohibited the taking of donkeys, sheep and fish from the townspeople and all kinds of deductions to the palace in payment for assessing their allowance and shearing the sheep. When a husband divorced his wife, no bribe was paid to the enzi, his viziers, or the abgal. When the deceased was brought to the cemetery for burial, various officials received a much smaller share of the deceased's property than before, and sometimes significantly less than half. As for the temple property that the enzi had appropriated for himself, he, Urukagina, returned it to its true owners - the gods; in fact, it appears that temple administrators now looked after the enzi's palace, as well as the palaces of his wives and children. Throughout the entire territory of the country, from end to end, notes a contemporary historian, “there were no tax collectors.”

WITHExamples of Sumerian technologies include the wheel, cuneiform writing, arithmetic, geometry, irrigation systems, boats, the lunisolar calendar, bronze, leather, saw, chisel, hammer, nails, staples, rings, hoes, knives, swords, dagger, quiver, scabbard, glue, harness, harpoon and beer. They grew oats, lentils, chickpeas, wheat, beans, onions, garlic and mustard. Pastoralism in Sumerian times meant raising cattle, sheep, goats and pigs. The role of a pack animal was a bull, and the role of a riding animal was a donkey. The Sumerians were good fishermen and hunted game. The Sumerians had slavery, but it was not the main component of the economy.

Sumerian buildings were made of flat-convex mud bricks, not held together with lime or cement, which caused them to collapse from time to time and be rebuilt in the same place. The most impressive and famous structures of the Sumerian civilization are the ziggurats, large multi-layered platforms supporting temples.

NSome scholars speak of them as the progenitors of the Tower of Babel, which is spoken of in the Old Testament. Sumerian architects came up with such a technique as an arch, thanks to which the roof was erected in the shape of a dome. The temples and palaces of the Sumerians were built using advanced materials and technologies such as half-columns, niches and clay nails.

The Sumerians learned to burn river clay, the supply of which was practically inexhaustible, and turn it into pots, dishes and jugs. Instead of wood, they used cut and dried giant swamp reed, which grew in abundance here, knitted it into sheaves or wove mats, and also, using clay, built huts and pens for livestock. Later, the Sumerians invented a mold for molding and firing bricks from the inexhaustible river clay, and the problem of building materials was solved. Here such useful tools, crafts and technical means as a potter's wheel, wheel, plow, sailing ship, arch, vault, dome, copper and bronze casting, needle sewing, riveting and soldering, stone sculpture, engraving and inlay appeared. The Sumerians invented a system of writing on clay that was adopted and used throughout the Middle East for almost two thousand years. Almost all of our information about the early history of Western Asia comes from the thousands of clay documents covered in cuneiform written by the Sumerians that have been discovered by archaeologists over the past one hundred and twenty-five years.

The Sumerian sages developed a faith and creed that, in a sense, left God to God, and also recognized and accepted the inevitability of the limitations of mortal existence, especially their helplessness in the face of death and God's wrath. As for their views on material existence, they highly valued wealth and property, rich harvests, full granaries, barns and stables, successful hunting on land and good fishing in the sea. Spiritually and psychologically, they emphasized ambition and success, excellence and prestige, honor and recognition. The resident of Sumer was deeply aware of his personal rights and opposed any attempt on them, be it the king himself, someone senior in position or equal. It is not surprising, therefore, that the Sumerians were the first to lay down laws and compile codes to clearly distinguish “black from white” and thus avoid misunderstanding, misinterpretation and ambiguity.

Irrigation is a complex process that requires joint effort and organization. Canals had to be dug and constantly repaired, and water had to be distributed proportionately to all consumers. This required power that exceeded the desires of an individual landowner and even an entire community. This contributed to the formation of administrative institutions and the development of Sumerian statehood. Since Sumer, due to the fertility of its irrigated soils, produced significantly more grain, while experiencing an acute shortage of metals, stone and timber, the state was forced to obtain the materials necessary for the economy either by trade or by military means. Therefore, by 3 thousand BC. Sumerian culture and civilization penetrated east to India, west to the Mediterranean, south to Ethiopia, north to the Caspian Sea.

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Sumerian influence entered the Bible through the Canaanite, Hurittian, Hittite and Akkadian literatures, especially the latter, as is known to have occurred in the 2nd millennium B.C. The Akkadian language was ubiquitous in Palestine and its environs as the language of almost all educated people. Therefore, the works of Akkadian literature should have been well known by the writers of Palestine, including Jews, and many of these works have their own Sumerian prototype, modified and transformed over time.

Abraham was born in the Chaldean Ur, probably around 1700 BC. and spent the beginning of his life there with his family. Then Ur was one of the main cities of ancient Sumer; it became the capital of Sumer three times at different periods of its history. Abraham and his family brought some of the Sumerian knowledge to Palestine, where it gradually became part of the tradition and a source that Jewish literati used in writing and processing the books of the Bible.

The Jewish writers of the Bible considered the Sumerians to be the original ancestors of the Jewish people. There are known consistent texts and plots of Sumerian cuneiform, which are repeated in the form of expositions in the Bible, some of them were repeated by the Greeks.

A significant amount of Sumerian blood flowed in the veins of Abraham's ancestors, who lived for generations in Ur or other Sumerian cities. Regarding Sumerian culture and civilization, there is no doubt that the proto-Jews absorbed and assimilated much of the life of the Sumerians. So it is very likely that Sumerian-Jewish contacts were much closer than is commonly believed, and the law that came from Zion has many of its roots in the land of Sumer.

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Sumerian is an agglutinative language, and not inflected like Indo-European or Semitic languages. Its roots are generally immutable. The basic grammatical unit is a phrase rather than a single word. Its grammatical particles tend to retain their independent structure rather than appear in a complex connection with the roots of words. Therefore, structurally, the Sumerian language is quite reminiscent of such agglutinative languages ​​as Turkish, Hungarian and some Caucasian ones. In terms of vocabulary, grammar and syntax, Sumerian still stands alone and does not appear to be related to any other language, living or dead.

The Sumerian language has three open vowels - a, e, o - and three corresponding closed vowels - a, k, i. Vowels were not pronounced strictly, but were often changed in accordance with the rules of sound harmony. This primarily concerned vowels in grammatical particles - they sounded briefly and were not emphasized. At the end of a word or between two consonants they were often omitted.

Sumerian has fifteen consonants: b, p, t, d, g, k, z, s, w, x, p, l, m, n, nasal g (ng). Consonants could be omitted, that is, they were not pronounced at the end of a word unless they were followed by a grammatical particle that began with a vowel.

The Sumerian language is rather poor in adjectives and instead often uses phrases with the genitive case - genitives. Connectives and conjunctions are rarely used.

In addition to the main Sumerian dialect, probably known as Emegir, "the king's language", there were several others, less significant. One of them, emesal, was used primarily in the speeches of female deities, women and eunuchs.

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According to the tradition that existed among the Sumerians themselves, they arrived from the Persian Gulf Islands and settled Lower Mesopotamia at the beginning of the 4th millennium BC.

Some researchers place the emergence of the Sumerian civilization no less than 445 thousand years ago.

In the Sumerian texts that have come down to us, attributed to V millennium BC, contains sufficient information about the origin, evolution and composition of the solar system. IN In the Sumerian image of our solar system, exhibited in the Berlin State Museum, in the very center there is a luminary - the Sun, which is surrounded by all the planets known to us today. At the same time, there are differences in the depiction of the Sumerians, and the main one is that the Sumerians place an unknown and very large planet between Mars and Jupiter - the twelfth in the Sumerian system. This mysterious planet was called Nibiru by the Sumerians - a “crossing planet” whose orbit, a highly elongated ellipse, passes through the solar system every 3600 years.

TOThe Sumerian osmogony considers the main event to be the “heavenly battle” - a catastrophe that occurred more than four billion years ago, and which changed the appearance of the solar system.

The Sumerians confirmed that they once had contacts with the inhabitants of Nibiru, and that it was from that distant planet that the Anunnaki - “descended from heaven” - descended to Earth.

The Sumerians describe the celestial collision that took place in the space between Jupiter and Mars, not as a battle of some large, highly developed creatures, but as a collision of several celestial bodies that changed the entire solar system.

ABOUTEven the sixth chapter of biblical Genesis testifies to this: nifilim - “those who came down from heaven.” This is evidence that the Anunnaki “took the women of the earth as wives.”

From the Sumerian manuscripts it becomes clear that the Anunnaki first appeared on Earth about 445 thousand years ago, that is, much earlier than the advent of the Sumerian civilization.

The aliens were only interested in earthly minerals, primarily gold. WITH The Anunnaki began by trying to mine gold in the Persian Gulf, and then took up mining in southeast Africa. And every thirty-six centuries, when the planet Nibiru appeared, the earth's gold reserves were sent to it.

The Anunnaki were mining gold for 150 thousand years, and then a rebellion broke out. The long-lived Anunnaki were tired of working in the mines for hundreds of thousands of years, and then a decision was made: to create any of the most “primitive” workers to work in the mines.

Luck did not immediately begin to accompany the experiments, and at the very beginning of the experiments, ugly hybrids were born. But finally success came to them, and the successful egg was placed in the body of the goddess Ninti. After a long pregnancy as a result of a caesarean section, Adam, the first man, was born into the world.

Apparently, many events, historical information, important knowledge that helps people reach a higher level, described in the Bible - all this came from the Sumerian civilization.

Many Sumerian texts say that their civilization began precisely with the settlers who flew from Nibiru when it died. There are records of this fact in the Bible about people who descended from heaven and even took earthly women as wives.

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WITHThe word "Sumer" is used today to refer to the southern part of ancient Mesopotamia. From the earliest times for which there is any evidence, southern Mesopotamia was inhabited by a people known as the Sumerians, who spoke a language other than Semitic. Some memos suggest that they could have been conquerors from the East, perhaps Iran or India.

V thousand BC There was already a prehistoric settlement in Lower Mesopotamia. By 3000 B.C. A flourishing urban civilization already existed here.

The Sumerian civilization was predominantly agricultural and featured a well-organized social life. The Sumerians were adept at building canals and developing efficient irrigation systems. Objects found such as pottery, jewelry and weapons indicated that they also knew how to work with materials such as copper, gold and silver, and developed art along with technological knowledge.

The names of the two vital rivers, Tigris and Euphrates, or Idiglat and Buranun, as they are read in cuneiform, are not Sumerian words. And the names of the most significant urban centers - Eridu (Eredu), Ur, Larsa, Isin, Adab, Kullab, Lagash, Nippur, Kish - also do not have a satisfactory Sumerian etymology. Both the rivers and the cities, or rather the villages that later grew into cities, received their names from people who did not speak the Sumerian language. Likewise, the names Mississippi, Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Dakota indicate that the early settlers of the United States did not speak English.

The name of these pre-Sumerian settlers of Sumer is, of course, unknown. They lived long before the invention of writing and left no traceable records. Sumerian documents from a later time do not say anything about them, although there is a belief that at least some of them were known in the 3rd millennium as Subars (Subarians). We know this almost for sure; they were the first important civilizing force in ancient Sumer - the first farmers, herders, fishermen, its first weavers, leather workers, carpenters, blacksmiths, potters and masons.

And again linguistics confirmed the guess. It appears that basic agricultural techniques and industrial crafts were first brought to Sumer not by the Sumerians, but by their nameless predecessors. Landsberger called this people the Proto-Euphrates, a slightly awkward name, which is nevertheless appropriate and suitable from a linguistic point of view.

In archeology, the Proto-Euphrates are known as the Obeids (Ubeids), that is, the people who left cultural traces first found in the El-Obeid hill near Ur, and later in the lowest layers of several hills (tells) throughout ancient Sumer. The Proto-Euphrates, or Obeids, were farmers who founded a number of villages and towns throughout the area, and developed a fairly stable, wealthy rural economy.

Judging by the cycle of epic tales of Enmerkar and Lugalbanda, it is likely that the early Sumerian rulers had an unusually close, trusting relationship with the city-state of Aratta, located somewhere in the Caspian Sea region. The Sumerian language is an agglutinative language, to some extent reminiscent of the Ural-Altaic languages, and this fact also points in the direction of Aratta.

IV millennium BC The first Sumerian settlements arose in the extreme south of Mesopotamia. The Sumerians found tribes in southern Mesopotamia who spoke the language of the Ubeid culture, different from Sumerian and Akkadian, and borrowed ancient place names from them. Gradually, the Sumerians occupied the entire territory of Mesopotamia from Baghdad to the Persian Gulf.

Sumerian statehood arose at the turn of the 4th and 3rd millennia BC.

By the end of the 3rd millennium BC. The Sumerians lost their ethnic and political significance.

XXVIII century BC e. - the city of Kish becomes the center of the Sumerian civilization.The first ruler of Sumer whose deeds were recorded, however briefly, was a king named Etana of Kish. The Royal List speaks of him as “the one who stabilized all the lands.” Following Etana, according to the Royal List, are followed by seven rulers, and several of them, judging by their names, were Semites rather than Sumerians.

The eighth was King Enmebaraggesi, about whom we have some historical, or at least saga-like, information, both from the King List and from other literary Sumerian sources. One of Enmerkar's heroic messengers and his military comrade-in-arms in the fight against Aratta was Lugalbanda, who succeeded Enmerkar on the throne of Erech. Since he is the protagonist of at least two epic tales, he was also most likely a venerable and imposing ruler; and it is not surprising that by 2400 BC, and perhaps earlier, he was ranked as a deity by Sumerian theologians and found a place in the Sumerian pantheon.

Lugalbanda, according to the King List, was succeeded by Dumuzi, the ruler who became the main character of the Sumerian "rite of sacred marriage" and the myth of the "dying god" that deeply affected the Ancient World. Following Dumuzi, according to the King List, reigned Gilgamesh, a ruler whose deeds won him such wide fame that he became a major hero of Sumerian mythology and legend.

XXVII century BC e. - Weakening of Kish, Ruler of the city of Uruk - Gilgamesh repels the threat from Kish and defeats his army. Kish is annexed to the domains of Uruk and Uruk becomes the center of the Sumerian civilization.

XXVI century BC e. - weakening of Uruk. The city of Ur became the leading center of Sumerian civilization for a century.The brutal three-way struggle for supremacy between the kings of Kish, Erech and Ur must have greatly weakened Sumer and undermined its military power. In any case, according to the King List, the First Dynasty of Ur was replaced by foreign rule of the kingdom of Awan, an Elamite city-state located near Susa.

XXV thousand BC By the middle of the 3rd millennium BC. we find hundreds of deities among the Sumerians, at least their names. We know many of these names not only from lists compiled in schools, but also from lists of sacrifices set out in tablets found over the last century

A little later than 2500 BC. A ruler named Mesilim entered the Sumerian scene, taking the title of King of Kish and, it seems, control over the entire country - a knob was found in Lagash and several objects with his inscriptions were found in Adab. But most importantly, Mesilim was the responsible arbiter in the brutal border dispute between Lagash and Umma. About a generation after Mesilim's reign, around 2450 BC, a man named Ur-Nanshe ascended the throne of Lagash and founded a dynasty that lasted five generations.

2400 BC The issuance of laws and legal regulation by the rulers of the Sumerian states was common in this age. Over the next three centuries, more than one plenipotentiary judge, or palace archivist, or professor of edubba, came up with the idea of ​​recording current and past legal rules or precedents, either for the purpose of reference to them, or perhaps for teaching. But to date, no such compilations have been found for the entire period from the reign of Urukagina to Ur-Nammu, the founder of the Third Dynasty of Ur, who came to power around 2050 BC.

XXIV century BC e. - the city of Lagash reaches its highest political power under King Eannatum. Eannatum reorganizes the army, introduces a new combat formation. Relying on the reformed army, Eannatum subjugates most of Sumer to his power and undertakes a successful campaign against Elam, defeating a number of Elamite tribes. Needing large funds to carry out such a large-scale policy, Eannatum introduces taxes and duties on temple lands. After the death of Eannatum, popular unrest began, incited by the priesthood. As a result of these unrest, Uruinimgina comes to power.

2318-2312 BC e. - reign of Uruinimgina. To restore deteriorated relations with the priesthood, Uruinimgina carries out a number of reforms. The state's takeover of temple lands is stopped, taxes and duties are reduced. Uruinimgina carried out a number of reforms of a liberal nature, which improved the situation not only of the priesthood, but also of the ordinary population. Uruinimgina entered the history of Mesopotamia as the first social reformer.

2318 BC e. - The city of Umma, dependent on Lagash, declares war on him. The ruler of Umma Lugalzagesi defeated the army of Lagash, ravaged Lagash, and burned its palaces. For a short time, the city of Umma became the leader of a united Sumer, until it was defeated by the northern kingdom of Akkad, which gained dominance over all of Sumer.

2316-2261 BC ABOUT Dean, one of the close associates of the ruler of the city of Kish, seized power and took the name Sargon (Sharrumken - the king of truth, his real name is unknown, in historical literature he is called Sargon the Ancient) and the title of king of the country, Semitic by origin, created a state covering all of Mesopotamia and part of Syria.

2236-2220 BC WITH Sargon made the capital of his state small town Akkad in the north of the Lower Mesopotamia: the region after it began to be called Akkad. Sargon's grandson Naramsin (Naram-Suen) took the title "king of the four directions of the world."

Sargon the Great was one of the most prominent political figures of the Ancient Near East, a military leader and genius, as well as a creative administrator and builder with a sense of the historical importance of his deeds and achievements. His influence was manifested in one way or another throughout the Ancient World, from Egypt to India. In subsequent eras, Sargon became a legendary figure, about whom poets and bards wrote sagas and fairy tales, and they indeed contained a grain of truth.

2176 BC The fall of the Akkadian monarchy under the blows of nomads and neighboring Elam.

2112-2038 BC The king of Ur Ur-Nammu and his son Shulgi (2093 -2046 BC), the creators of the III dynasty of Ur, united all of Mesopotamia and took the title “king of Sumer and Akkad”.

2021 -- 2017 BC. The fall of the kingdom of Sumer and Akkad under the blows of the West Semitic people of the Amorites (Amorites). (Toynbee). M Much later, Hammurabi again called himself king of Sumer and Akkad.

2000 BC. The free population of Lagash was about 100 thousand people. In Ur around 2000 BC, i.e. when it was the capital of Sumer for the third time, there were approximately 360,000 souls, Woolley writes in his recent article “The Urbanization of Society.” His figure is based on minor comparisons and dubious assumptions, and it would be reasonable to cut it by about half, but even then the population of Ur would be close to 200 thousand.

At the beginning of the 3rd millennium BC. Several small city-states, nomes, arose on the territory of southern Mesopotamia. They were located on natural hills and surrounded by walls. Approximately 40-50 thousand people lived in each of them. In the extreme southwest of Mesopotamia there was the city of Eridu, near it the city of Ur, which was of great importance in the political history of Sumer. On the banks of the Euphrates, north of Ur, was the city of Larsa, and to the east of it, on the banks of the Tigris, was Lagash. The city of Uruk, which arose on the Euphrates, played a major role in the unification of the country. In the center of Mesopotamia on the Euphrates was Nippur, which was the main sanctuary of all of Sumer.

City Ur. There was a custom in Ure to bury their servants, slaves and associates along with members of the royal family - apparently, to accompany them in the afterlife. In one of the royal tombs the remains of 74 people were discovered, 68 of whom were women (most likely the king's concubines);

City-state, Lagash. A library of clay tablets with cuneiform text inscribed on them was discovered in its ruins. These texts contained economic records, religious hymns, as well as information very valuable to historians - diplomatic treaties and reports on wars that were fought on the territory of Mesopotamia. In addition to clay tablets, sculptural portraits of local rulers, figurines of bulls with human heads, as well as works of craft art were found in Lagash;

The city of Nippur was one of the most important cities in Sumer. Here was the main sanctuary of the god Enlil, who was revered by all the Sumerian city-states. Any Sumerian ruler, if he wanted to strengthen his position, had to receive the support of the priests of Nippur. A rich library of clay cuneiform tablets was found here, the total number of which amounted to several tens of thousands. Here the remains of three large temples were discovered, one of which is dedicated to Enlil, the other to the goddess Inanna. The remains of a sewer system were also discovered, the presence of which was typical for the urban culture of Sumer - it consisted of clay pipes with a diameter of 40 to 60 centimeters;

City of Eridu. The first, a city built by the Sumerians upon their arrival in Mesopotamia. It was founded at the end of the 5th millennium BC. directly on the shores of the Persian Gulf. The Sumerians built temples on the remains of previous sanctuaries so as not to abandon the place marked by the gods - this eventually led to a multi-tiered temple structure known as a ziggurat.

The city of Borsippa is famous for the remains of a large ziggurat, the height of which even today is about 50 meters - and this despite the fact that for centuries, if not millennia, local residents used it as a quarry for the extraction of building material. The Great Ziggurat is often associated with the Tower of Babel. Alexander the Great, impressed by the greatness of the ziggurat at Borsippa, ordered its restoration to begin, but the death of the king prevented these plans;

The city of Shuruppak was one of the most influential and wealthy city-states of Sumer. It was located on the banks of the Euphrates River and in legends was called the homeland of the righteous and wise king Ziusudra - a man who, according to the Sumerian flood myth, was warned by the god Enki about punishment and with his entourage built a large ship that allowed him to escape. Archaeologists have found an interesting reference to this myth in Shuruppak - traces of a major flood that occurred around 3200 BC.

In the first half of the 3rd millennium BC. Several political centers were created in Sumer, whose rulers bore the title of lugal or ensi. Lugal means “big man”. This is what kings were usually called. Ensi was the name of an independent ruler who ruled any city with its immediate surroundings. This title is of priestly origin and indicates that initially the representative of state power was also the head of the priesthood.

In the second half of the 3rd millennium BC. Lagash began to claim a dominant position in Sumer. In the middle of the 25th century. BC. Lagash, in a fierce battle, defeated its constant enemy - the city of Umma, located to the north of it. Later, the ruler of Lagash, Enmethen (circa 2360-2340 BC), victoriously ended the war with the Umma.

The internal position of Lagash was not strong. The masses of the city were infringed upon in their economic and political rights. To restore them, they united around Uruinimgina, one of the influential citizens of the city. He removed the ensi named Lugalanda and took his place himself. During his six-year reign (2318-2312 BC), he carried out important social reforms, which are the oldest legal acts known to us in the field of socio-economic relations.

He was the first to proclaim the slogan that later became popular in Mesopotamia: “Let the strong not offend widows and orphans!” Extortions from priestly personnel were abolished, natural allowances for forced temple workers were increased, and the independence of the temple economy from the royal administration was restored.

In addition, Uruinimgina restored the judicial organization in rural communities and guaranteed the rights of the citizens of Lagash, protecting them from usurious bondage. Finally, polyandry (polyandry) was eliminated. Uruinimgina presented all these reforms as an agreement with the main god of Lagash, Ningirsu, and declared himself the executor of his will.

However, while Uruinimgina was busy with his reforms, a war broke out between Lagash and Umma. The ruler of Umma Lugalzagesi enlisted the support of the city of Uruk, captured Lagash and reversed the reforms introduced there. Lugalzagesi then usurped power in Uruk and Eridu and extended his rule over almost all of Sumer. Uruk became the capital of this state.

The main branch of the Sumerian economy was agriculture, based on a developed irrigation system. By the beginning of the 3rd millennium BC. refers to a Sumerian literary monument called “Agricultural Almanac”. It is presented in the form of a teaching given by an experienced farmer to his son, and contains instructions on how to maintain soil fertility and stop the process of salinization. The text also gives detailed description field work in their time sequence. Cattle breeding was also of great importance in the country's economy.

The craft developed. Among the city's artisans there were many house builders. Excavations at Ur of monuments dating back to the mid-3rd millennium BC show a high level of skill in Sumerian metallurgy. Among the grave goods, helmets, axes, daggers and spears made of gold, silver and copper were found, as well as embossing, engraving and granulation. Southern Mesopotamia did not have many materials, their finds at Ur indicate brisk international trade.

Gold was delivered from the western regions of India, lapis lazuli - from the territory of modern Badakhshan in Afghanistan, stone for vessels - from Iran, silver - from Asia Minor. In exchange for these goods, the Sumerians sold wool, grain and dates.

Of the local raw materials, artisans had at their disposal only clay, reed, wool, leather and flax. The god of wisdom Ea was considered the patron saint of potters, builders, weavers, blacksmiths and other artisans. Already in this early period, bricks were fired in kilns. Glazed bricks were used for cladding buildings. From the middle of the 3rd millennium BC. The potter's wheel began to be used for the production of dishes. The most valuable vessels were covered with enamel and glaze.

Already at the beginning of the 3rd millennium BC. began to produce bronze tools, which remained the main metal tools until the end of the next millennium, when the Iron Age began in Mesopotamia.

To obtain bronze, a small amount of tin was added to molten copper.

The Sumerians spoke a language whose kinship with other languages ​​has not yet been established.

Many sources testify to the high astronomical and mathematical achievements of the Sumerians, their construction art (it was the Sumerians who built the world's first step pyramid). They are the authors of the most ancient calendar, recipe book, and library catalogue.

Medicine was at a high level of development: special medical sections were created, reference books contained terms, operations and hygiene skills. Scientists were able to decipher records of cataract surgery.

Genetics scientists were especially shocked by the manuscripts found, which depict in vitro fertilization, all in detail.

Sumerian records say that Sumerian scientists and doctors of that time conducted many genetic engineering experiments before creating the perfect man, recorded in the Bible as Adam.

Scientists are even inclined to believe that the secrets of cloning were also known to the Sumerian civilization.

Even then, the Sumerians knew about the properties of alcohol as a disinfectant and used it during operations.

The Sumerians had unique knowledge in the field of mathematics - the ternary number system, the Fibonacci number, they knew everything about genetic engineering, they were fluent in the processes of metallurgy, for example, they knew everything about metal alloys, and this is a very complex process.

The solar-lunar calendar was extremely accurate. Also, it was the Sumerians who came up with the sexagesimal number system, which made it possible to multiply millionth numbers, count fractions, and find the root. The fact that we now divide a day into 24 hours, a minute into 60 seconds, a year into 12 months - all this is the Sumerian voice of antiquity.

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